Ari Goldman - The Late Starters Orchestra

It takes two hands to play a cello, the left hand to hold and finger the instrument and the right hand to bow. If there are left teachers and right teachers, then Joanne was, by far, a right teacher. All she talked about was the bow. “The bow is your voice,” she told us at the first meeting of our little group. Holding the bow is an art, she said. “Hold the bow like you are holding a live bird — firmly enough so it doesn’t fly off yet not so hard as to crush it.”

Of course it wasn’t all bow all the time, but it would always begin with the bow. “The bow is your lungs,” she said a day later, “the strings are your vocal cords, the body of the cello your diaphragm.” Joanne did exercises with us; one of them resembled the butterfly stroke you’d see someone doing in the pool. “Hold your arms open wide, lean back, and then lean forward and embrace your cello. Open your arms. Close your arms. Open. Close. Open. Close.”

She demonstrated how we could vary the sound by placing the bow at different intervals between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge that holds up the strings. Think of it, she said, not just as variations in sounds but as different colors. Red was fortissimo (really loud). Orange, forte (loud). Yellow, mezzo forte (medium). Blue, piano. Light blue, pianissimo (quiet).

She was quite a colorful character herself, given to passionate outbursts of joy or pain at our playing. She barely sat still, at times hopping around the room to make a point about rhythm or sound.

Joanne handed us our schedules, which gave each of us time alone with her, time as a group with her, and then time — endless time — alone. We were each assigned a practice space: a walled-off room in a church or house or office to practice on our own. It made my time at ELLSO feel like a bacchanal. There were so many activities, both music and social, at ELLSO that I barely had an hour a day by myself. At SummerKeys, I practiced three and a half hours the first day and five the second day. There was nothing else to do. I kept up that level of commitment throughout the week.

Joanne made my day at our first private lesson. “You are not a beginner,” she said. “You know the notes. You have a good ear. But you need to learn to make sounds with confidence.” On day two she was harder on me. “You are not applying the bowing lessons I showed you. Did you practice?”

I was afraid to tell her how many hours I did practice.

She said that I needed to relax between the notes and the bowings. She dramatically pulled a hair out of her auburn head and waved it in front of me. “You must stop, but just for a hairsbreadth.”

“Every note has integrity,” she said at another point. She played a note and as she played she explained: “A note is born. A note lives a full life. A note dies. Now be sure to give it a chance for a proper funeral!”

Energetic was her middle name. When I had problems with my rhythm, she jumped around the room, almost as if she was on an invisible pogo stick, to demonstrate the proper rhythm.

On day three, though, her mood turned dark. “Brutal private lesson with Joanne,” I wrote in my diary. “The room is cold and damp. Joanne is wrapped in a coat and is congested. Her ugly little dog is sniffing about in the corner. Joanne has lost all patience with me. She hurled the most painful insult: ‘You are playing like you did before,’ she declared.

“I feel like I am disappointing yet another teacher,” I wrote. “I am not sure I can ever get better.” But Joanne was determined. As I was playing, she grabbed my right elbow and began directing my bow, back and forth, back and forth. First she guided me firmly, then roughly, pushing my arm like it was a child on swing.

She laughed, but I could feel her frustration, even her aggression.

“I guess you’ve worked with all kinds of students,” I said to break the tension.

She took her hand off my arm. “Little ones, big ones, professionals, semiprofessionals, superprofessionals, and everything in between.”

I had to wonder: Was I the worst student she ever had?

I came away from that session dispirited. That night I sat in the chilly summer night air on the steps of the Lubec Memorial Library, which had mercifully left its wireless connection on and sent an e-mail to Shira. “What am I doing here?” I wrote. “This was a dumb idea.”

THE WEEK AT SUMMERKEYS built to a crescendo with musical performances on the last night. This was finally the time we would be able to hear the other groups — the pianists and the mandolin players — perform. And they would hear us cellists. Our little cello ensemble had been preparing a variety of pieces for the performance, mainly transcriptions by Mendelssohn and Vivaldi, since there is really so little music written for five cellos.

Most of us were anxious. We planned to play four pieces together and then each take a solo turn. Ruth, who had been working all week with Joanne on the Saint-Saëns, was in good shape, but a student named Tobie was having a meltdown over her little slice of Vivaldi. “I’ve got major performance anxiety,” Tobie told me. But at least she had the courage to play in public. I felt so dispirited by my week at SummerKeys, I told everyone that I would not perform my Bach solo. I practiced it a hundred times but felt I was not ready for prime time, even if prime time meant a concert in the local church.

“I’m just not ready,” I told Joanne at our last lesson. I was bracing for an argument from her but she seemed relieved by my decision and didn’t press me further.

The concert was a success. I played with the ensemble and then sat out the solos. I was not sure anyone even noticed.

So here I was, ten weeks before my sixtieth birthday — with years of lessons behind me, a hundred nights of practice with Judah and on my own, and weeks spent at cello camps — and still no closer to my goal. If I couldn’t play in Lubec how could I play in Manhattan? I began to think that I would never get there.

The trip to Maine wasn’t a total waste. I did fall in love. . with Ruth’s cello. I had rented it from her for a week and now couldn’t part with it. I figured that even if I ended up quitting in frustration, I knew that Judah would enjoy this instrument. It did have a beautiful tone. We had been renting a half-size cello for Judah in New York. Here was the full-size cello that he could step up to when he was ready.

I FLEW HOME FROM Maine, and Ruth’s cello came via UPS a few days later. Ruth sent it in a huge cardboard refrigerator box surrounded on all sides by foam rubber. It arrived in good shape — and still in tune. Although I was expecting that it would be a while before Judah was ready for this cello, he took to it immediately. It was the next step both in size and in sound. He brought out the best in the instrument. Soon after I returned to New York, we attended Judah’s middle school graduation, which included a musical presentation with Judah on cello.

On stage, waiting his turn, Judah appeared supremely at home. A group of his classmates was singing, and Judah was just jamming along naturally, like you or I would hum along. At times he spun his cello around on the end pin, just like a wild jazz musician might do. It made me nervous — I had just spent thirty-five hundred dollars on that instrument — but when Judah started to play I calmed down. I listened and realized that Judah on the cello was everything I was not: strong, precise, passionate, and consistent. I watched him not in jealousy but in awe. This is perfect, I told myself. Why do I need anything more? I have a son who is a cellist. And his music brings me great joy. Maybe this is the end of the story. This is the end of my cello dream. And it is fulfilled.