>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Well, our connection this hour is made on a therapy couch with a drag queen during a new comedy show.

It's also made with a new book on old music.

The Bach Cello Suites, and it's made with gold medals around the necks of Olympians who got their starts right here in Rochester.

It's our weekly news roundup, and as usual, there is a lot to discuss.

We begin with what happened yesterday in Milan, where the U.S.

women's Olympic hockey team took home the gold medal in just about the most dramatic fashion possible.

They trailed Canada most of the game, but the undefeated team tied their historic rivals with just two minutes left, and then a sudden death winner in overtime.

But before they played the gold medal game before they got to the Olympics, five of those players were training right here in Rochester, and my colleague Veronica Volk has done some some work on the Rochester connection at the Olympics this year.

Welcome, welcome.

Nice to see you.

>> Thank you so much for having me, Evan.

And yeah, what a what a nail biter yesterday.

Awesome game, great game.

>> What does Rochester, by the way, have to do with team USA?

Olympic gold medal?

>> Well, you said it.

You said it pretty well that we got five players on team USA that went to Bishop Kearney High School.

Kerstin Simms, Caroline K.K.

Harvey, Laila Edwards, Ava McNaughton and of course, Haley Winn Bishop Kearney recruits women from all over the country.

But Haley Winn is from Rochester.

She grew up right in Williamston, so.

>> But that's kind of like the part of the story that is jarring for people.

They go, wait, Bishop Kearney ends up this elite school of hockey players?

>> Yeah, I know, and so I live in a Rhonda Dorgan Bishop Kearney you mean the school on Ridge Road?

>> That's crazy right?

>> And they've been around since the 60s.

They're private six through 12, Catholic school.

but like ten years ago, they're looking around.

They're seeing a lot of other religious schools that are struggling.

You've got enrollment going down, smaller schools are closing, elementary schools are closing.

And so at Bishop Kearney, they're thinking about what to do.

And I actually got a chance to talk to the current president, Paul Colantino, about this moment.

>> We were undergoing.

Air, I'd like to say, a strategic analysis and review of assets of what we have, what we could do.

And what we did have was a third floor that was predominantly empty.

So we took this floor, reconfigured it, created the dorm spaces.

Hockey is a sport in this region that is very popular.

Now, we know that this specific program, because of its residential component, it draws from all over the world.

But the sport itself is popular.

And it was something that the school had a very good knowledge base in with a few key partners.

We were able to kind of move that forward and like any startup business, startup school, you go through some of these hurdles, these ups and downs and the adjusting and the learning curves of the early years.

But as time marched on, the commitment level from our school, from our board of trustees was steadfast and it was no, we are going to continue doing this.

We are seeing the positive results.

We are seeing where these girls are going, the impacts that they're having.

You know, nationally, it was 100% commitment because we knew it was the right thing to do.

So how did we get here?

A little courage, a little education.

And then truthfully, a large, large amount of great people that were willing to support the cause and the push.

>> That sigh at the top.

I want to know more about that sigh, that exasperated sigh.

But the headline here is that it's paying off, right?

Like you have all of these players on team USA, they're recruiting players from all across the country, actually across the world, to live on campus.

They're training all the time.

They're alums are professional hockey players.

They're playing for team USA and.

>> They're playing for they're playing for other countries as well as.

>> They are.

They're three additional alums that are playing for other countries in the Olympics as well.

And by the way, the current students are loving this.

I got to hang out with them, actually.

>> I think if you're watching on YouTube, we've got photos of the party that you got to hang.

>> Oh I did, yeah.

So I went and watched the first game that they played against Canada.

This was in the preliminary round and they smoked them five to nothing.

But it was it was really exciting to watch.

>> I mean, because the culture that that Paul and you've been reporting on here that Paul was talking about, it's not just the five players there now.

I mean, it's this, this ecosystem.

And you had a chance to talk to current students who were watching, you know, former teammates.

You want to set one of those up here?

>> Sure.

Yeah.

One student athlete I talked to while I was there, her name is Michaela Hunt.

She's 16 years old, and she was just really excited.

So I think we have a cut from her.

We can play.

>> It's so amazing to watch people who, you know, in the Olympics, obviously, like we've walked the same halls, we have the same teachers.

It's crazy.

And especially being from Rochester, we do have Haley Winn.

She is from Rochester too, so it's just amazing to watch her because I've known her ever since I was little.

So I started playing hockey when I was nine.

I have a younger sister.

Her name is Tessa.

She is 11 right now.

Haley would coach us.

She would come on the ice.

I would skate with her.

she would coach my sister and all of that.

So we skated at Rochester Ice Center in Fairport a lot.

But yeah, it was just amazing to skate with her.

She's so fast and good and great to learn from.

So just to, like, look up to her and be like, I can be that one day.

Like, hopefully I can be there.

>> We're rooting for you, Michaela.

We think you can be there too.

And obviously, like we love Haley Winn.

The hometown pride is so real.

But there are some other really significant Bishop Kearney alums that we have to talk to that we have to talk about right now.

Laila Edwards is the first black woman to play for team USA, the first black woman to score for the team, the first black woman to win gold with the team.

She's just shattering all these ceilings.

so I was really grateful that I got to talk to Chloe Brinson about this.

She's a senior at Bishop Kearney.

She's 18.

She's a woman of color.

And when she was kind of figuring out whether or not she she was recruited from another school, and when she was trying to figure out whether or not she wanted to go to Bishop Kearney, she talked to Edwards and it was really Laila Edwards who told her what it would be like when she got here.

>> Like, one of the main things I can remember is that, like, she just felt welcomed and like loved.

And I think a super big important part for me, along with my parents and like the rest of my family, is just that, like my color, like my skin color wouldn't be something that I would be different.

I wouldn't be treated differently for.

So I think with past experience is just playing hockey.

Like I've interacted with stuff like that.

So like with my next steps, I wanted something that felt more safe and like more like more welcoming.

In that factor.

>> So hockey is like, no question, a predominantly white sport, right?

But both Brinson and Edwards are involved in this nonprofit called Black Girl Hockey Club that's trying to make the sport more accessible.

And then there's also like a ton of work being done just to make it accessible for little girls in general.

Both of those young women that I talked to, a lot of people in this program started out in boys hockey leagues just because there wasn't anything for them.

>> So great reporting there.

And boy, Rochester is still buzzing over the Olympic women winning, winning gold.

And now Rochester turns its focus to Chris Lillis out on the freestyle, jumping way up in the air and trying not to fall down.

>> Just like defying physics.

>> Incredible.

>> It's amazing.

>> He hits the air at 44 miles an hour.

He told us.

It's unbelievable.

>> To Chris Lillis.

That's right.

He was on the show last week.

>> It was like.

It was like a few weeks ago.

Yeah.

And this guy, I cannot everybody's like, when's he going to ski?

When's he going to get hit the slope.

What's been delayed.

Delayed.

Here we go.

>> Right Chris Lillis Pittsford native freestyle skier and I mean men's aerials got postponed twice this week.

So up against a lot they had to do their qualifiers, their finals all in one shot.

This morning I actually got a chance to go down to Bristol Mountain and there was like a group of fans there cheering them on, which was really cool.

some little kids there, and it's great because you're sitting in the lodge, you're watching the projector, and then behind the projector is this huge window where you can see the mountain that Chris Lillis trained on when he was a little kid, three years old.

He says he started skiing on that mountain and just, you know, people turned out for him.

730 in the morning, in the driving rain.

so he actually he didn't get a medal in that event, but we're still obviously very proud of him.

And he's he's still got a shot at the mixed team aerials tomorrow morning.

>> Which is where four years ago he won gold.

>> That is.

>> Correct.

In mixed team aerials.

>> Yeah.

See Evan knows about the Olympics.

>> I do know a little about the Olympics.

Awesome.

Awesome stuff.

So we're going to be watching Chris Lillis in the mixed team.

We'll see how it ends up there.

Final thoughts you've been there's been a whirlwind covering these rochesterians in the Olympics.

Yes.

What's on your mind?

>> so I would just want to say that no matter like how you vote, how you feel, this the direction the country is going in, I think it's a it's a hard time for a lot of people right now.

It's a stressful time for the country.

And I'm thinking about the conversation that you just had with the local clergy going to Minneapolis.

>> Yeah.

>> So we're holding that as Americans.

Right.

But then you're also holding this hockey team and you've got the first black woman on the team.

You've got an openly gay team captain Hilary Knight by the way, she got engaged at the games to her girlfriend, another American Olympic speed skater, Brittany Bowe.

You've got these young women from Williamson, from Buffalo, Ohio, Minnesota.

It's real representation.

It's real Americana.

And then not only did this team win, they completely dominated the tournament.

so whether you care about the Rochester connection or not, it's just been really great.

And in some ways really cathartic to root for this team.

So I'm happy.

I can't wait for 2032.

>> I was going to.

>> Say 2030, >> 2030, 2030.

What year is it 20 2030?

No.

Set your calendars for four years because Bishop Kearney has established itself as this feeding ground for this incredible program.

What a story.

Thank you Veronica Volk.

Awesome.

Awesome stuff there.

What a great way to lead off this Friday.

We got to take a short break.

We'll come right back here on Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Monday on the next Connections.

Do you struggle sometimes with pseudoscience and health care?

Is it hard to understand what you're seeing, what the source is, who you trust?

We're going to talk more about that.

It's an ongoing theme of conversations we've had, and we'll talk about pseudoscience in healthcare and medicine.

Monday.

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>> I'm joined now by WXXI Classical 91 five music director, host and producer Mona Seghatoleslami.

We're talking about Bach.

This is the time of year you might see Bach in the wild at the Old Heart Grocery.

I remember my three year old son was stopped cold going, what is that?

It was someone's playing Bach in the wild.

Nice.

Not awesome.

>> And his music connects to people.

Even though it's now centuries old.

The recording we're listening to here is actually from about a decade ago on live from Hochstein with violist George Taylor, who was on the faculty at the Eastman School of Music.

>> Well, you know, everything old is new again, and specifically a new book about the Bach Cello Suites, which, you know, we're hearing some of that.

We just heard some of that.

What's going on with this story?

>> So Edward Clurman is from Rochester.

He's a violist, like I am, but he's also a music theorist, a professor in Wisconsin, and he teaches people both about classical music and colleges, but is a great writer about music and culture and a sort of broader sense.

And I brought this book up when I was on the end of Year Books episode, but I had a chance to speak with Edward Clurman over a video chat for like 20, 25 minutes about this book.

And I was really excited to have somewhere to share it, so.

>> Well, let's share it right now.

Let's enjoy that.

>> Hello, I'm Mona Seghatoleslami Music director at WXXI classical and I'm very excited to have the opportunity to interview Edward Clurman, who's a violist and a scholar active at the intersection of musical analysis, historical musicology, and music performance.

He's currently Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-madison's Mead Witter School of Music.

He's also a Rochester native who is a co founding director of Chamberfest Canandaigua and a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra as a kid, and has plenty of ties to our community.

He also has a great new book out about the Bach Cello Suites, beloved pieces that have a fascinating history and continue to have a fascinating life in our consciousness.

Edward.

Hello.

>> Hello.

Thank you so much for having me.

>> Well, I'm really excited to talk about the book and about Bach's music that is, in some ways seems like such a standard thing for cellists and other musicians to play for us to listen to, to hear in multiple recordings, but also has a long and strange life.

And I want to, I guess, start with this notion of a piece of music that lives, whether it's its history, its role of what we understand it to be.

Now, what drew you into this music?

>> You know, this is music that many people know, whether they know the name Bach Cello Suites or not.

if you or your children have studied Suzuki violin, they've probably played pieces from Bach Cello Suites.

That was how I first encountered them when I was maybe eight years old.

So for people who play instruments like cello, viola or bass, this is music we really live with from childhood throughout our entire lives.

And it's endlessly enriching.

Whatever stage of life you're in, whatever level you're performing is there's different ways to approach these pieces.

They're endlessly challenging, and people always find new things to bring out in them.

So it's very enriching for a musician and for a listener.

>> And these pieces go back to being written by Johann Sebastian Bach in the 18th century.

But even where they came from is a little strange, because we don't have the original manuscript in Bach's hand.

We only have different versions that people copied from some other source that no longer exists, and even the idea of what a cello was in Bach's time was not set in a way that we know.

Can you talk a little bit about how you started digging into the original history of these pieces?

>> Absolutely.

That's a great question.

Sometime around 1720, Bach completed six pieces for solo violins, known as the Sonata and Partita.

And then these six pieces for cello, known as the Cello Suite.

And violinists are very lucky.

We know exactly what kind of instrument Bach had in mind.

They can download a PDF file showing exactly Bach's handwriting.

Does this slur start on this note or on that note?

And so you really have a very clear sense of what notes you should be playing and how Bach conceived of them.

But for the cello suites, they're always been a little bit shrouded in some mystery.

For whatever reason, Bach's original autograph manuscript doesn't survive the most likely explanation is that he didn't get around to copying it out himself into a final version, and commissioned a student or someone in his circle to do that.

And so we have copies based on the copy, and the challenge we face is that they're not all the same.

So in some places you have to decide, should I play the notes the way it was written by his wife or the way it was written by someone else who was sort of a student of his?

And one thing I get into in the book is that there's some new thinking that some other copies that were written about 50 years after Bach died might actually be our best sources, because it's recently been discovered that they were copied from a copy that belonged to his son, and they were written by professional copyists who took a lot of care.

so this is meticulous work scholars have done to try to get to the bottom of, you know, should it be this note or should it be that note?

And musicians who want to try it different ways and try to get closer to the way he conceived of it?

you know these new perspectives entirely change the way you play certain phrases.

Even the question as you raise this of what is a cello?

You know, today we think we know a cello is an instrument that's about a certain size.

It has four strings.

You hold the bow this way.

Well, so far as we understand, most cellists in Bach's lifetime would have held the bow that way.

So an underhand bow hold, that means for them, the up bow is the stronger stroke, and the down bow is the weaker stroke.

So it's exactly the opposite of what many of us are used to today.

Some cellos had five strings.

There was a kind of a cello that you played up on your shoulder, and you held with a strap.

There were the cellos, you played between your knees.

There were bigger ones.

There were smaller ones.

And we can only guess exactly what kind of instrument Bach might have had in mind.

But we also know a lot of Bach's music can be adapted for many kinds of instruments, so I don't think we need to fret too much if our instruments are not the same as the ones that he would have been using.

>> In a way that's sort of a product of our own time or a post-romantic modernist idea, that there is one way to do something.

It does seem that in that time, whether it was people adding their favorite arias to whatever opera they were performing or thinking of pieces as having a life, you know, to add piano parts to a solo part throughout the 19th century, that there's a more flexible concept that you can bring to this idea of what is this piece and what do we do with it?

>> Yeah, at a certain stage when I was a student, I really felt a lot of pressure to try to figure out, well, what did Bach want and how do I do that?

And as I learned more and more, I realize people have always been reinventing different approaches to these pieces, and that's part of the richness.

so, you know, these pieces, we know very little about who played them in Bach's lifetime or afterward.

But some evidence in those manuscript copies.

So some of the later copies have some more ornaments and embellishments in them that aren't in the earlier copies.

And the thinking is, it's possible that Bach, together with students or people in his circle, would add, would embellish, would clarify, would refine in ways that grew out of the way this particular musician might have played, and that those have been preserved in these copies.

That suggests that musicians today could be continuing to do the same sort of thing.

But then the other story I tell in the book is when these pieces really began to enter the concert repertoire, it was long after Bach's lifetime.

So around 1860, 1870, there's a lot of interest in rediscovering and reviving Bach's music.

But often that meant needing to modernize it.

So, for instance, some audiences thought, well, music for just a solo cello, that's not very interesting.

That sounds sort of like etudes.

And there was a tradition of adding piano accompaniment in a way that would modernize or enrich or bring this music a little closer to contemporary tastes.

We don't do that today, but that's how many of the first audiences to hear this music would have encountered it.

There was another cellist, Friedrich ützmacher.

He really believed in the cello as a showy, virtuoso instrument, and so he made one edition of the cello suites.

That's pretty close to what Bach wrote.

But he made another one where he added every which kind of chord, every which kind of staccato, you know, virtuoso techniques to really just show off everything you can do on the cello.

His idea was that Bach completed this piece up to a certain point, but he said, what?

The bare original could only hint at.

My version completes and realizes in its entirety.

So here's one of the most famous cellists of the 19th century really making this music his own.

And this is the first cellist to regularly play complete suites in recital to rave reviews.

So that's really interesting that this version that's so different from what Bach wrote and so different from how we play today, we can actually look at it and imagine what it sounded like and kind of comb through the archive and get a sense of the different stages of how people heard and imagined and reacted to these wonderful pieces.

>> And that gets us to one of the main myths about this piece is, is that everyone had forgotten it until Pablo Casals found it in a dusty copy in an old music shop, and he's the one who brought it to all of us.

He, of course, is very important to our modern conception of this music by Bach, but it hadn't really died out up until his time, right?

>> Yeah.

I mean, there's not much of a record of who was playing these pieces until around 1860.

The first published edition was 1820.

So people knew of these pieces for some decades.

But really in the 19th century, that's when folks are reviving and beginning to publish a lot of Bach's music.

And there's a number of editions from the 19th century.

So I was able to dig up concert reviews that tell us, you know, who was playing them, where and when.

Sometimes, in some surprising places, certainly throughout Germany, France and England.

But even as far away as Australia, there were performances in the 19th century and a lot of previous stories of the cello suites haven't really gotten into this record, but you can just dig through you know, music journals or newspapers and read the concert reviews and really see who was playing and where.

Which movements were they playing?

Often we can tell how they played them.

at the Paris Conservatoire, there was a competition where many students all had to play the same sarabande.

That's one of the slower dances from the piece, from the cello suites.

And there's a review written of these performances comparing the different cellists.

but yes, in the popular imagination, I think even if you read on Wikipedia, you'd read this today that the cello suites were barely known until Pablo Casals, the Catalan cellist he I wouldn't say that he discovered them because there's all these performances before him, but he certainly did something tremendous to popularize them and to establish them as a standard part of the cello repertoire.

He played them in public hundreds of times.

He made the first recording of all six suites in the late 1930s.

And he taught many, many people who went on to become teachers of musicians in my generation.

so just a tremendous legacy, not just in the way he plays them, but also Casals left a kind of humanitarian or pacifist legacy.

he was resistant.

He fled Spain during the Franco regime.

And so for him, there was this view that his politics were aligned with his music making and his pro-peace approach.

And that's something that seems to have inspired generations of musicians.

I think of Yo-Yo Ma, who has played the cello suites for first responders during Covid, or he's performed them at the US-Mexico border or in protest outside the Russian embassy.

there's also Ukrainian cellist who made a viral video just a few years ago performing in Kharkiv, just after it had been bombarded.

So there's this association with the cello suites and pacifism that takes its inspiration from Casals.

Mrs.

Slava Rostropovich, the Russian cellist who played as the Berlin Wall, was falling.

Falling played the cello suites also.

So they've taken on this life that seems a lot motivated and inspired by Pablo Casals example.

>> And I really enjoy how you tease these stories out throughout the book, because I've also lived with these pieces pretty much throughout my life.

As a young violist in, you know, I think region all state orchestra auditions, I were playing some of the bourrées.

And then when I was in college, when I realized sort of that I wasn't necessarily meant to be a performer.

I loved the stories behind the music.

It was the lessons where I suddenly started trying to look up manuscripts of Bach and read articles and find 50 different editions of them, but, you know, not practice any of the notes.

Right?

And then again, like you tell in the book, during the pandemic, as pieces that I would play or pieces I've played at church, preludes, at funerals, at gigs, at weddings, that this is just music that's been part of my life.

So much so actually, I don't know if this is perhaps the best compliment I can give.

This book is halfway through reading it, I stopped reading it because I went to get my viola and to start playing, because I was really fascinated by some of the things you said, and it led me to thinking more about the dances, which I think I want to tease out a bit, and what a prelude means, what it means to approach these different styles of pieces and just all different little stories.

I had some I'd known, some I'd only half known, even that perhaps we don't have that original manuscript because Bach came home from musical travels to find out that his wife had died when he was in the middle of working on this.

>> That's right.

We know he finished the solo violin pieces while he was traveling with his patron, who was a prince, to a spa in Bohemia.

He brought his best musicians with him.

We know that because the paper he wrote, the violin solo violin pieces on was made near that spa.

And so the best we can understand is maybe the cello suites were composed around then, but not yet written out completely.

And then he returned home.

From this trip.

He was away several months to learn that his wife and the mother of his first several children had died and been buried while he was away.

This must have been just a tremendous shock and disruption for his family.

surely the act of copying out the cello suites into a final version was not his first priority.

During this period of disruption, it might be that that fell to a student.

He asked to do it at a later stage in the copy made by the student was the source for the subsequent copy.

So I wanted to try to get all this information all in one place for people who play these pieces, which is many string players.

I mean, they're played on cello, on viola, on bass, even some violinists, but people play them on other instruments too.

I wanted to just try to get all the information in one place documented with reliable information.

So I tell you what, we know what we conjecture where you can go to find more about it.

But I also wanted people who enjoy listening to these pieces, you know, people who go to concerts have surely had them.

There's a trend these days where people will play all six of the cello suites in one marathon night, or in a subscription with two nights.

if you've heard a few of those, or if you have you know, an album in your collection, this is a book that you could read that would give you some background about what you're hearing and what's interesting about it.

But even if you don't think of yourself as a classical music goer, you've probably heard these pieces in other contexts.

on Reddit, whenever people write about that cello song, they mean the prelude to the first cello suite.

That piece is really ubiquitous.

in the film Master and Commander, it's used throughout the film, sort of represent the flow of the ocean.

Also in The Hangover two also in the film The Hunger, David Bowie plays the he learned to play cello for that film.

So it's really all over.

in the Netflix series Wednesday, the new Addams Family series in the series premiere, there's a big extended scene where Wednesday plays cello, and what she's playing is a solo cello version of a pop song.

But if you look closely at the music that she's playing and you see what is it?

Thing is turning the pages for her, that music is the prelude to that first cello suite.

So this is a piece a lot of people will recognize, even if they don't know it by the name prelude in G major.

>> And as a radio announcer, I often trace down where you know this piece from where you know this reference to Bach.

But there are so many more.

I think digging into the video games, the anime Connections, and the really exciting to have some of those just different notes that really bring us almost up to the present time with, again, what this music meant to people during the pandemic.

>> It's amazing to think that 100 years ago, critics were still debating whether this is good concert music, whether it's interesting to hear a solo cello or whether these are really studies.

I read a review from around 1900 saying, well, it's really just a bunch of scales and trills.

It's nothing.

It should never have left the classroom.

Someone said.

And today, you know, the New York Times described it as some of the best music ever composed.

I mean, boy, that's a big claim.

and it's just such a worldwide phenomenon.

You know, I think of someone like Yo-Yo Ma, who recently did a project where he performed the cello suites in 36 cities.

Since there's 36 movements.

So he played them on six different continents in places where maybe classical music isn't as ubiquitous as it might be in other places.

it's in a lot of pop music.

So I was able to find some hip hop songs that sample the cello suites.

it's in K-drama.

It's in Japanese pop music.

several anime series.

So, so Japanese cartoons, animated series.

incorporate the cello suites into the soundtrack or even have characters who play the cello.

So this has really come to be a kind of worldwide heritage, really recognizable, important music.

over a century.

It's a really unlikely story that this music that was forgotten was rediscovered.

people have kind of experimented with how to play it, and now it's just everywhere.

And now I notice it.

You know, when I was in Spain doing some research for this book, just walking on the street in Madrid, I heard someone busking at a corner, playing on their electric bass, playing the prelude to the first cello suite.

So this music is really surrounding us everywhere, and I just wanted to celebrate it and explore all the angles of ways people have made a life with this music.

>> And I do want to bring in one more character and story from this, since we are both viola players, which is how we came to this music.

There's a sort of legendary violist who played the Bach Cello Suites.

Lillian Fuchs, will you talk a bit about her?

>> Absolutely.

Lillian Fuchs was an extraordinary chamber musician and viola player who lived most of her career in New York.

And at that time in New York around the 1940s and 50s.

She played one of the cello suites in recital.

And it just so happened that a representative from a record label was there and had never conceived of the idea that this music could be played on cello.

This was not too long after Pablo Casals had made his world premiere recording in the late 1930s, and so she was commissioned to, to to make a recording of all six cello suites on viola.

She spent five years really making a careful study of each of the suites, and she just played them fantastically.

this recording, when I was first learning viola wasn't even available.

It was out of print for decades, but it was finally rereleased and, I went back and looked at some of the reviews when it first came out and people were comparing it favorably to Pablo Casals reviews.

This giant of the cello who had brought these pieces into light, somewhat out of obscurity.

And they were saying, here she is playing on viola.

the reviews would sometimes say the viola is not an easy instrument to manipulate and make it sound exciting, and that her recordings really stand up to Casals.

But the story that apparently she told to her students and her students have written down and told to me is that she was invited to Casals Festival in France, where he was living in the 1950s.

This was when he fled Spain and he said, why don't you play one of your cello suites for me if you'd like?

And the idea being that we wanted to see, did he really approve of them?

Could this music be played with integrity on an instrument other than the cello?

And she chose to play suite number six, which is the most virtuoso and demanding of the suites.

It's written for a five string instrument, so if you play it on a regular cello or regular viola, you have only four strings, so you have to play really high up to reach some of the notes that normally would have been on that fifth string.

And so she played for 30 minutes for Casals, and he sat there quietly and said, you know, on the viola it sounds better.

And so this silence, where she's wondering, what's he going to say?

What's the verdict?

but to have received his approval I understand, meant quite a lot to her.

And so in the same way that he established this a standard repertoire for cello, she did the same for viola.

And so many students can trace through their teacher back to these musicians.

They have that influence.

>> And that's I'd say, although I read this as someone who's played this music, I feel that it is very accessible for a listener who just is curious about history.

Or, you know, maybe you won't understand all the chords and keys and notes, but since these are based on dances and you can talk about the historic context, I had never thought of Johann Sebastian Bach as someone who was very cosmopolitan, one of those sort of myths or stories that's told about him as he was this backwater German church musician who never wrote operas because he wasn't like Vivaldi out in the main, you know, European mainstream.

But to know that he loved French culture and French dance when he was younger, or what courts he was working at to know these kind of things that I think are very relatable, to understand the different rhythms and styles and the really international flavor of these is interesting.

>> That's exactly right.

You know, Bach, there's a famous biography of Bach called Bach the Learned Musician.

So although he didn't travel very widely he was really interesting, interested in absorbing.

Well, you mentioned Vivaldi.

He wrote transcriptions of Vivaldi's music.

This was a way he didn't go to Italian speaking places, but that music came to him.

so when he grew up, he was for some years studying at a choir school, which was next door to a school for German aristocrats.

Those aristocrats, they lived a lot of their life in French.

That was sort of the aristocratic language.

Each of them, you know, if they were a prince, they would want their court to resemble the splendor of Versailles.

So they would have ballet, they would have opera, they would have ballroom dance.

So the instrumental suite was to some extent an import from France, because France was the place known for the most beautiful dancing.

French dance masters would travel all over Europe to teach people music, to teach comportment, manners.

so the idea that this had some influence in the way that these pieces were written suite number five in particular, has all these elements that sound very French.

The prelude is written in the style of a French overture.

Tom dum dum dum, those sort of rhythms that are known as dotted rhythms that that is music that would be written in an overture for the king to enter into the theater.

so that was that imitation.

And then there's a fugue for, for solo cello, which is something interesting to imagine, a fugue, which is usually for many different voices put together.

But Bach managed to achieve this with nothing but a single cello.

you know, if you have a fugue for organ, you're playing with both hands and your feet.

But for solo cello, he manages in the mind of your listener, you're hearing a melody and something against that melody.

It's really kind of magic that, you know, the challenge for Bach is, how much can I make out of the limited resources of just this one instrument?

and that he creates this whole world of what's possible in the sound of the resonance of the cello, and that you can play this music on marimba or saxophone or harp, and it sounds different, but it brings out different aspects of it.

That's something really extraordinary to me to, to fathom.

If you search on YouTube, you can find recordings on, you know, steel drums, you know, every kind of instrument, some really beautiful and interesting recordings.

How people have adapted the cello suites.

>> So it gives us an amazing framework for understanding sort of creative ideas, history, things we can learn from it.

But then also I feel things we bring to it ourselves as performers, as listeners, as thinking people.

So that's really this book was really a delight for me because I love digging into history, but I'm not going to trace down every source in every Spanish library.

So you've really put it in an amazing context that even someone who spent their life of a few decades with this music, playing and reading and listening, I still learned a whole bunch of new things.

So thank you so much.

>> Oh thank you.

That means so much to me and that it inspired you to to take out your viola and approach these pieces in a different way.

I'm really delighted to hear that.

>> And before I let you go, is there anything else you want to add?

Otherwise, just want to encourage people to check out this book full of characters and stories in a bit more knowledge.

>> Thank you.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, a lot of people who are familiar with the cello suites might feel, well, a kind of already know about them.

Do I need to read a book?

But I can promise you you'll find a lot of surprising and entertaining stories here.

And if this is music you might know a little bit or are curious to get to know better.

This is a book you could read in 1 or 2 afternoons, and that would just bring out some new angles on it that you can think about the next time you listen to a recording or attend a concert.

>> Well, Edward, thank you so much.

So happy to reconnect with Rochesterians out in the world doing really fascinating things with music.

>> Thank you so much for having me.

>> Thanks to my colleague Mona Seghatoleslami, I'm Evan Dawson.

We're going to wrap up the week on Connections next with drag queen and comedian Aggy Dune.

I'm Evan Dawson Monday on the next Connections.

Do you struggle sometimes with pseudoscience in healthcare?

Is it hard to understand what you're seeing, what the source is, who you trust?

We're going to talk more about that.

It's an ongoing theme of conversations we've had, and we'll talk about pseudoscience in healthcare and medicine.

Monday.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield, working with members to find health coverage for every stage of life, helping to make care and coverage more accessible in more ways for more people across the Rochester community.

Details online at excellus.

>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson and there is a new monthly show at the Carlson called therapy.

Aggy Dune is a drag queen and comedian, and this is a show that is a queer comedy show.

Uplifting queer voices and a little therapy.

We're going to talk about the therapy aspect of it.

It's nice to see you.

>> You too.

>> You're looking.

>> I'm going to say like, you know, good.

It's well, it's the lighting, the lighting, it's fluorescent lighting in here.

So it's sort of a hate crime to my people.

But thanks.

For thanks for supporting us.

>> The lighting makes your hair look great.

It actually makes my hair look like it's starting to thin.

>> Oh, see, you stick with my people and we'll keep you in, like, dim lighting that makes our hair look really full.

>> so, Aggy Dune, we're going to talk about the show coming up here.

You know, I was thinking about this conversation we were about to have when so SNL recently had a sketch that went really, really viral about a mom who is coming to the realization, talking to her children that maybe she she shouldn't be a Trump supporter and she's going over.

I don't know if you saw the sketch.

So there's this moment in the sketch where she's going.

You know, I feel like maybe and she's kind of recounting all the things she thinks she got wrong.

And at one point she says, and I feel like drag queens are just hilarious.

You.

I was like, whoa.

>> Like she's she's gotten some therapy.

>> She's gotten some therapy.

What is it like seeing, you know, these, these pop culture moments and, you know, Drag Story Hour?

Drag queens have been in, in the culture in ways that feel probably sharply political.

Does it still feel that way?

Is it feel like it's ebbed.

>> At all?

Well, it depends on the person you're talking to.

Some people make it a political thing.

Sometimes it's just it's just a drag queen reading a story to a kid.

and then sometimes it's a drag queen making a political statement.

So it depends on the context of all of it.

But queens have been around a long time.

And you can make you can choose to say, oh my God, this is just a lot of fun.

And it's basically, I think of myself as a birthday clown, you know, as soon as the birthday clown shows up at the party, everybody can start having fun.

>> Do you have people who see the show for the first time and go, that was not what I expected.

I really.

>> Enjoyed it so many times.

So many times we do drag brunches and bingos and all of that, and a lot of times we get people, I never knew what to expect, but this was not it.

I had a blast, you guys.

It's just fun.

I go, yeah, it's just fun.

>> I want to know what were they expecting?

>> Well, that's what I, I can't say on the radio because we have censors, but I think that they're expecting something like raunchy or, or things.

And I think that there's like any entertainer, whether it's an actor or that they could do something that's like, you know, really raunchy stand up kind of thing all the way to, like, they're voicing a Disney character.

So I think that, you know, they pick and choose.

If we see you as an enemy, then we're going to put you in that box.

>> I mean, every queen that I've met locally and there's a great group of performers, it's really great.

but every queen I've met when we talk about knowing your audience, it's like, you know, the moment, you know the audience, there's going to be some stuff that's, you know, Adult plus, and there's going to be some stuff that's, you know, a story hour and you tailor it for them.

>> You tailor it to the thing and you're all just actors with just extra sparkle.

So, you know, just like either turn up the sparkle or turn down the sparkle.

So yeah, most of our things that that I do, it's like it's like I said, bingos and brunches and bachelorette parties and they all run the gamut.

But you say know your audience.

You walk into it and they can go, oh, it's expecting more.

I go, I don't want to give anybody ammunition to come at me.

>> So yeah, well, why make why drag, drag, drag.

You like I did not even do that.

>> Wow.

I'm rubbing off on you.

>> Well, let's let's talk a little bit about what's going on at the Carlson with therapy.

first of all, when can people see you?

>> it's the fourth Thursday of every month at the Carlson.

And I called it therapy because.

>> You're like the Thanksgiving of every month.

>> I'm the Thanksgiving, aren't you?

Thanksgiving of drag.

Here I am.

so it's.

I wanted to create a show that lifts up other voices in the community.

And if I have an opportunity to shine a light on someone else that maybe you haven't heard of, that's in our community.

And that they come on stage.

So the show is kind of set up like like The Tonight Show.

I come out and I do an opening monologue, I interact with the audience, and then I bring on the guests.

They do their their comedy set, and then afterwards they join me on the therapy couch where I psychoanalyze them.

and we just have a conversation to get to know the performer, the person behind the performer.

So.

And then that's what the crowd, I think really reacts to is that they they come out, they like the, the interview part more than actually even the comedy.

I think that we're all just craving that we're so locked into our devices and into our screens, and we're so disconnected from other people in a lot of ways, that going out and laughing together and having that moment and then having an actual conversation that isn't targeted to your algorithm, I think that people are reacting to that.

So I think that's why it's been so successful so far, and I'm so excited to see where it goes.

>> So the fourth Thursday of every month.

Every month, at what time?

>> At 7:00 you can come out, have a big pretzel, maybe a cocktail, have a few laughs and still be home by 9:00.

>> And, Carlson is a sneaky good mocktail list.

I just want.

>> They have a really good mocktail list, and, you know, they carry my bitters there.

I have my own line of cocktail bitters, so, you know, you can have an Aggy Dune cocktail.

You never know.

She's an old bitter queen.

>> see that?

We're ending the week on a fun note here with Aggy Dune.

what is the right age range for the Carlson shows.

>> The Carlson.

Because they serve alcohol.

It's always a 21 and over.

>> That's 21.

>> Yeah.

And so and so you know that you can go further with comedy because of that.

But at the same time, I don't I feel like there's enough of those kind of queens out there.

I don't need to be that one.

I'm like, I always go, I, I have low hanging fruit.

I don't need to reach for it.

>> Okay.

Aggy.

I do wonder, and you talked about the fact that you think people are hungry for just good conversation, sitting on the couch.

The therapy portions of the show are very, very popular.

do people want comedy about the national scene, politics, social issues?

How do you feel about mixing in different themes and subjects?

>> I try to pepper it in because it's what we're all going through.

And for a lot of people who come to the show, they want an escape from it.

So they go, I just want to go for like an hour and a half and not think about the dumpster fire of of a country that we live in.

And so they come in, they go.

I forgot about everything going on because I was just present and engaged and laughing.

And then when they leave, they go, I so needed this.

I was feeling really heavy with the things going on in the world, and this gave me a break for a minute.

So I just got I was able to like, it's almost like you're like treading water out in the ocean.

You got to put your head up for a minute and go, oh, I can breathe for a minute.

The world's going to come crashing down again with the next wave.

But if if I can give people that little moment of just levity and laughter and just feeling like yourself again, just for a moment, feeling yourself as I'm sitting here in this big, fabulous wig feeling yourself then I think that then, you know, I've kind of done my job and, like, that's all I want to do is just help people get through the day and the heaviness of the world at the moment.

>> When the people who are coming for the first time have that experience and they they tell you it wasn't what I expected.

Do you feel like sometimes boundaries are broken down?

This is a way to do that.

>> Totally.

And I think that like when you have those like actual Connections to people, that suddenly something was painted as such a villain or something that was painted so evil and like something to be afraid of because you don't know anything about it.

when you have that one on one with people, whether it's a conversation like this or therapy on the couch at the, at the show, or just a one on one after the show, talking with the patrons when they're leaving, that they get that moment of saying, oh my God, this isn't scary at all.

I'm like.

And I think that can apply to whether it's queer people, a drag queen immigrants, whatever it is.

I'm like, all of those same principles apply.

And so you just like if when you talk to people one on one, you can actually make those Connections.

>> Oh, look, look what you see.

>> We're turning around on each other today.

>> Full circle indeed.

do you think that the critics of drag have often never been to a drag show?

>> Most of the time?

Yeah.

And if they have, the biggest critics are the ones who go to the shows all the time and they enjoy it, but they don't want anyone else to know, because it's an easy thing to paint as a villain.

because we are so easily recognizable, because we're just like a float in a parade.

So you go, that's a danger.

Look at that.

That's a danger.

I'm like, how am I danger?

Like, they're like, oh, oh, they're coming for grooming our children.

I'm like, I don't want kids.

I have breakables, I don't want anything to do with kids.

and they're, they're kids are attracted to Queens because it's just like, look, it's a giant fairy princess.

>> Yeah.

Again, I'm going to say a lot of the criticism that I read doesn't reflect the experience I've had with drag queens.

And obviously Aggy is part again of this constellation of local queens.

And the only experience I've had, this is my own experience is queens who want kids to feel comfortable as themselves, whatever that looks like.

>> Yeah.

And one of our guests that we have on the show coming up this month.

his name is.

I got to make sure I say it right.

Jonathan Grosse, Arno Graziano, Jonathan Graziano, he during Covid started, like, just doing TikTok videos of his dog noodle.

And then that turned into a book deal with Simon and Schuster.

And so noodle.

Now as a bones no bones day.

When I talk to my clients, I own a hair salon.

So when I'm talking to them, I'm like, oh, I have this guy Jonathan, and I show the picture and they go, that's bones, no bones.

Oh, I'm like, I love him.

Oh my God, he's going to be there.

I'm like, yeah.

And he lives here in Rochester.

He was from Rochester, moved and went to Boston, New York.

And then now he's back and living here.

So it's a great way to like introduce him.

And he's got these kids books and it's really about his dog noodle.

>> Now the therapy portion, you're sitting down on a couch.

Why did you call it therapy.

Does it feel like therapy to you to kind of talk things out?

>> Well, I think yeah.

Because like for me, I go, you guys are paying me and I get to talk about my problems to you.

This is the best therapy in the world.

But I thought it's just a cute play on words to just say, you know, it's just what the doctor ordered.

Like, laughter is the best medicine.

And where are you going tonight?

I'm going to therapy because I just thought, like, it's just.

It's cute.

It's clever, but I always say, like, you know, we're all getting.

We're gathering together to laugh.

So it becomes group therapy.

We're going to do shots at the bar.

We're going to have shot therapy.

I have my merch table so you can do some retail therapy.

I've got all the different therapies taken care of.

So I try to like touch into them because like, everything can be I don't want to say a joke, but everything can be something that makes you go, clever.

>> Okay.

And so therapy is going to be the theme there.

It kind of reminds me.

So you mentioned how a lot of people want to get away from this, like we feel.

Yes, I'm holding up my cell phone, but people will tell you I don't want to be on this thing as much as I am.

I feel that way.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> You know, we.

>> Talk addictive.

>> We talk to high school students this week about that.

you know, some will openly say, like, I feel addicted to it.

And when you're in person together in a show and having this community, it kind of feels old fashioned.

I think you and I are of a certain age where we can remember a life before the cell phone.

>> Oh my God, it was so much better.

>> I think it was.

>> Well, you could, you could, you could cut loose and have fun.

Not worry that somebody's got a camera and are going to post it and get all these like, things on you and like, you know, post some hateful like, look at him dancing.

>> Ha ha.

>> so you could, you could be more yourself before the cell phone.

>> Yeah.

I think there's that.

I think there's also I mean, you probably experienced when you're on stage and it's like you look out and hopefully people are locked in, but some people are on their phone, they're on their phone.

It's like you paid for a ticket, right?

>> I just went, I'll cash your ticket.

It's okay.

But I also look and I when you're on stage because you live in the age of the cell phone, that you tell a joke and some jokes, you go, it's the joke is totally fine.

And the whole context of the show.

But if you just take the one sentence out, then that's what somebody films, and then they want to post that online because, oh, look how it is.

Take them down.

>> Take it out of context.

>> Yeah, I think that's going to be my next show.

It's called out of context.

>> Out of context.

I do agree with you that life felt and this is where it's like Aggy and I are going to sound like they're yelling at clouds, like life.

>> Let's get out of my yard.

>> Life was better.

But I think this is one of the ways that life was better.

Because when you ask, like kids, how do you feel like spending four hours a day on TikTok?

Half of kids, teenagers say, I wish TikTok were never invented, but I'm going to spend the next four.

>> Hours, but I'm still going to do it.

>> I'm still going.

>> To do it.

Yeah, because it it is addictive.

You have to, like, literally set your own guidelines and your, your guardrails for yourself.

You have to say, oh, I can only watch social media until the toast pops up for breakfast.

I'm like, once the toast is up, it's like, put it down.

>> It takes a lot of discipline.

>> It does.

And then it's also a necessary evil.

If you want to promote things like your show.

I know, so you have to use it as a promotional thing and go, well, the people, if they're going to be watching it, they might as well watch me.

>> I know, I know, so you feel like you can't win in that way.

But all of which leads us to the fact that I still think it's healthy.

Whether you're going to go see a drag show, whether you're going out to a movie in a theater and not just watch it on your couch, I think communing in person is still really important.

It's almost therapeutic, right?

>> It's therapy.

It's like, and that's what it is like, just come out for a little group therapy and a little laughter together, because watching a movie by yourself and laughing at something is one thing.

When you go to a movie and the whole place erupts with laughter at the same thing, you've just feel collectively connected to other people.

>> So in our last couple of minutes here how long are you going to do this?

What's the plan with the Carlson?

>> The Carlson it is such a it's such a gem in our city to have a club like that, that has so many different types of shows that they do there.

They have their comedy and they have some, like, really risque stuff, and they have national headliners.

They have charity shows.

We just did a charity bingo there for the children's organ transplant organization and the totally different crowd that came out.

And it's a drag queen hosting bingo for children's organ transplant.

I'm like, it can't get more weird and diverse on your bingo card than that, but it's amazing to have places like that that exist that say, we want to have people have Connections, so that's why we're there.

So I hope this goes on forever.

It's like a talk show.

It's like The Tonight Show.

I'm going to be here forever.

>> Every, every fourth Thursday.

>> Every fourth Thursday.

>> Of the month.

That's how you know you can find Aggy Dune at therapy.

And again, you talked a little bit about this month's show.

>> This month's show.

So yeah, we have Jonathan.

Graziano, I got you got it.

I had to write it phonetically because I'm so.

But he's a New York Times best selling author.

It's amazing.

we have chi Vonn Vonn doom doom.

she's a black lesbian comedian who was just voted Rochester's best comedian through City Newspaper.

I have Brian Ink, which is a straight comedian from Rochester, now lives in Syracuse.

But because he's like, we always say, I want to have like a drag queen, a lesbian, a gay guy, and an ally so we can, like, have all of our things out there and kind of shine a light.

I've known Brian since he was five.

He does.

I do his mother's hair.

So I was like, oh, you're coming?

Because I've got stories of.

>> His mother's hair.

>> Yes.

That's amazing.

It's amazing.

And then I have Darien Lake, which we all know and love from RuPaul's Drag Race Season six and All Stars eight.

And, you know, Rochester icon.

And so, you know, we've got a little a little something for everyone.

>> online.

More information at the Carleton's website.

You can check it out, tickets in advance or at the door.

>> Or at the door by in advance.

I know you're coming.

>> Thank you for making time.

>> Well, always for you.

>> And I really appreciate a chance to kind of laugh a little and have a have something a little lighter to end the week with, because to your point, I mean, we get listeners telling us, like, the show's been kind of heavy lately.

>> Well, the world is.

>> The world is kind of heavy.

>> So I'll be your ozempic of news.

>> Aggy Dune drag queen comedian therapy at the Carlson.

The fourth Thursday of every month.

>> Thank you.

We'll see you next month.

>> Nice to see you.

And from all of us at Connections.

Thanks for being with us on our various platforms.

Wherever you're finding us, we are so grateful.

Thank you.

We're back with you next week on member supported public media.

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