Practice for Performance

Practice for Performance provides a rare and intimate view into a very thoughtful and successful performer's personal toolkit. Set in the context of his own personal history of growth as a performer, cellist Daniel Morganstern (principal cellist for the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York) displays rare honesty in discussing the problems that faced him at various point of his career, and the ways to solve them. The discoveries sensibly unfold in a fascinating account of experiences with many notable artists whose comments and examples shaped the author's thinking. These ideas are not to be found in any other treatise on the subject of musical preparation. The examples in this book, both musical and non-musical, offer a foundation to help evoke instinctive musical responses in the mechanical processes of playing the cello, and have been advantageously applied to other instruments as well, including voice.