Julia MacLaine Interview
This is the transcript of my interview with Canadian cellist Julia MacLaine. The podcast, video and show notes are linked above.
Julia MacLaine (00:00:00):
I just remember I'd go downstairs, the baby would be asleep, and I'd go down to the basement. I'd practice it and practice it and practice it because I felt like there was an opportunity, a seven minute opportunity to create something so beautiful for the people who were listening. That really, that was really my way back into accepting the amount of work that we put in because I thought, well, if I can be really open and not squeeze when I get up to the high parts or really know where this phrase is going, and if I know where the super special, soft moment is and don't make three soft special moments, but only one, then that one's really going to feel special to everybody.
Leah Roseman (00:00:51):
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast strives to inspire you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians with in-depth conversations and great music that reveal the depth and breadth to a life in music. I've known the Canadian cellist Julia MacLaine for many years in her role as Assistant Principal Cello of Canada's National Arts Center Orchestra, of which I'm also a member. In this episode, we're highlighting her gorgeous album Preludes, which pairs the preludes of J.S. Bach for cello solo with newly commissioned works for solo cello by Canadian composers. Julia and I talked about many things, including how best to address the challenges of maintaining high levels of playing and inspiration, studying the craft of songwriting with the legendary Ian Tamblyn, the intricacies of putting together ambitious projects, her childhood in Prince Edward Island, and strategies to cope with performance anxiety.
(00:01:47):
It was really inspiring to hear some of the wisdom Julia gained from her mentors, including Timothy Eddy and the late Antonio Lsyy. This episode features excerpts of music from preludes, including that of J.S. Bach, Airat Ichmouratov, Carmen Braden, Roy Johnstone and Nicole Lizée. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms, and I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahroseman.com. The podcast theme music was commissioned from Composer Nick Kold, and you can use the timestamps to navigate the episode. Before we jump into our conversation, I wanted to let you know that you can support this independent podcast through a unique collection of merch with a very cool design from artists Steffi Kelly. You'll find that link in the description of the episode. This weekly podcast is in season four, and I send out an email newsletter where you can get access to sneak peeks of upcoming guests. Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links, including the merch store and also the support link to buy this independent podcaster a coffee. Now to Julia MacLaine.
(00:02:58):
Hi, Julia. Thanks much for joining me here today.
Julia MacLaine (00:03:00):
Thanks for having me.
Leah Roseman (00:03:02):
It's really fun to get to know my colleagues better. My regular listeners will know. I've interviewed quite a few colleagues in the National Arts Center Orchestra, including our colleague Rachel Mercer, so I'll point people towards that episode if they're listening to this for the first time. I'm hoping we can do a deep dive on your album Preludes, but also get to know you more as a musician. So I think I'll be going back and forth a little bit between the album and your life as a musician.
Julia MacLaine (00:03:29):
Sounds good.
Leah Roseman (00:03:30):
If we could start with the Bach preludes. You perform each of the six preludes on this album that you alternate with new Canadian works, and what was your relationship with those Bach preludes growing up?
Julia MacLaine (00:03:43):
Probably like most cellists, my relationship was early and passionate and consistent. Remember hearing an interview with Yo-Yo Ma on the radio that my mother steered me towards, and I remember him talking about him learning the first Bach Prelude bar by bar when he was a little boy, and my mother, she was listening too, and she said, well, you could learn that as well. And I think there was a story about Jacqueline, okay, now I'm getting all these stories about a famous cellists mixed up, but it's okay. They're intertwined for me. But I think Jacqueline Dupré's mother also would write out bars of this music and draw a picture for her and leave it under her bed every morning so that she'd find it when she woke up. And so my mother did this for me, and so I started learning the Bach, the first prelude bar by bar, and then you go to music school and every audition, every exam, there's a requirement to play a Bach Prelude, every orchestra audition. These are these suites, and the Preludes maybe in particular, are kind of the cornerstone of being a cellist. You're also drawn to the story of them not really being performed during Bach's life or for a very long time after that, until Pablo Casals famously discovered them in a little secondhand music shop in Barcelona and said, oh, these are kind of more interesting than just etudes. Not that etudes can't be interesting, but that he saw something more worthwhile in them and started performing them. Yeah, they've been with me my whole life, I guess since I was nine years old.
Leah Roseman (00:05:40):
Yeah, I had an old Casals album, which I think was the second version I heard. I had a Yo-Yo Ma recording when they first came out, and then I had this Casals. And I'm curious about the story about your mother. So is she a musician?
Julia MacLaine (00:05:55):
My mother is a flutist. She studied flute at Indiana University and then went on to study English literature. So both my parents were English literature professors, but she kept on playing the flute. And so then we traveled a little bit when I was younger and then eventually settled in Prince Edward Island where my father was from. And my mother taught in both the English department and the music department and played in the Prince Edward Island Symphony for a long time. So yeah, music was definitely in the house as I was growing up.
Leah Roseman (00:06:34):
Did she encourage you to try the cello or had you heard it and wanted to play it?
Julia MacLaine (00:06:39):
We were living in Singapore. My parents had gotten jobs teaching there and thought I should start playing the piano. That was kind of a given. I was six or seven, and then she took me to hear the symphony in Singapore play, and I think it was a Polish man who played a piano concerto on the first half with the orchestra and a cello concerto on the second half. And I thought, oh, that's pretty cool. Maybe I could do that. Maybe I could play both instruments. And my mother also took me to meet the principal cellist of the orchestra. And I remember she had these great orange pleated shorts on, and she was very nice. So I think my mother kind of directed me toward the cello. She thought it was a beautiful instrument. And when we moved back to Prince Edward Island or moved to Prince Edward Island after having been in Singapore, then I started lessons there.
Leah Roseman (00:07:38):
That must've been such a contrast for you lifestyle-wise.
Julia MacLaine (00:07:41):
Oh, huge, huge contrast. Yeah. When you're six years old and you moved to Singapore, you don't really know from Edmonton. You don't really know that it's all that different. It just becomes part of what to be the world. And moving back to Prince Edward Island after that was definitely a little bit challenging for me as a nine-year-old, I had been in a French private school in Singapore with kids who were really mean and arrogant and was teachers who were mean also. It was just a very kind of strict environment, but also fascinating. You'd walk out of the classroom door onto an outdoor balcony and there'd be monkeys hanging around. And then in Prince Edward Island, everything was much warmer in some ways. But also I came with this exotic or unusual experience that was threatening, and I probably didn't do a very good job of presenting or sharing.
(00:08:56):
It's difficult to share an intense experience like that at that age. So it was also difficult for me to, and also, I love music, and I was starting to play the cello, and I just was kind of different, so I didn't fit in all that well to my class when I arrived in Prince Edward Island. On the other hand, we built a house on the corner of my grandfather's farm on the south shore of Prince Edward Island. It's a beautiful spot. It's a point. It's called Rice Point. And so there's ocean on both sides of our house and or two sides of the house, not this way.
(00:09:33):
And it felt very romantic to me. We still talked about driving into town because that was a half hour away, and my grandparents remember driving across the bay in a horse and sleigh when it was the winter and it was frozen because that was the quicker way to town than on the road. So I felt I enjoyed the romanticism of, and I could feel the connection to an older world there, which I really liked, but musically, it was lonely. I was the only one in my class and almost the whole school who was really into music, so that was a bit lonely.
Leah Roseman (00:10:14):
Yeah, I can relate to that. Well, I love to include music early in an episode so people can have a chance to hear you play. And one thing I was hoping we could include is the D minor Prelude of Bach, because it's the one that people maybe don't know as well, but I really love it and I love your interpretation. It's so soulful, but without being sentimental, I think your pacing is great. So if we could share that, that'd be really great.
Julia MacLaine (00:10:40):
Sounds lovely.
Leah Roseman (00:10:42):
You're about to hear Julia's performance of Suite number 2 for cello in D Minor, the Prelude by J.S. Bach. All the music included in this episode is from her album Preludes, and you'll find the links for that album in the description of this podcast. (Music)
(00:14:43):
Well, let's talk about when you went to McGill. I also went to McGill for my undergrad. And your teacher, Antonio Lysy, he died last year.
Julia MacLaine (00:14:51):
He did, yeah. That was shocking. He was early sixties, I think, and it made me regret not having kept in touch with him. Yeah, it made me think that I should make an effort to make sure I stay in touch with my other teachers that I've also had. Antonio was a beautiful cellist, just gorgeous, so elegant and refined, soulful, considerate in his choices of music making. And I remember mostly kind of learning, I guess, musical and technical discipline with him. And so actually, it's interesting that you mentioned him right after the D minor Suite, because that was the Prelude that I studied with him when I first got to McGill. And he's not a H.I.P., historically informed performance guy in a purist way, but he wanted me to really refine and kind of be specific about how I was using my bow. So he said, we're going to play this, and you're not going to use any vibrato and everything that you're going to do, anything you want to do in terms of phrasing or inflection has to be done with the bow.
(00:16:20):
So yeah, I remember at first I was like, I was a teenager and I wanted to emote and be expressive, and I liked everything that was romantic, and so it felt like I was being choked a little bit. But it was so useful, obviously, to understand how you can bring out the voices with different amounts of bow, different pressure, different contact points, and then that translated into all the other repertoire. And so making sure if you have a long phrase and Elgar concerto or whatever romantic thing that you're really how much bow the top of the phrase. And so if you want to use your whole bow on that note, then back up until you've started from somewhere smaller and you're not using a huge amount of bow in one place and where you don't really mean it. So really making sure that everything I was doing technically was a result of something that I wanted to do as an idea or a musical conviction.
Leah Roseman (00:17:29):
And did he assign repertoire or did you have some choice in there?
Julia MacLaine (00:17:34):
I think it was a mix. I think he had, that was something that he asked me to do. I remember then working on Elgar Concerto probably because I loved it, but also it made sense in my development. There were some things that he said, well, at this point you should really be working on hide and D, that's something that needs to happen. But he might say, well, how about either a hide and D major concerto or Rococo variations? And I said, well, I'd rather do hide. And so kind that kind of choice. We also worked a lot on intonation, and the idea was to get a tuner out. And obviously if you look at a tuner and just kind of wiggle around until you are in the right place, then you have taught your hand nothing more than to wiggle around. And so it was really a question of, let me train my ear with this.
(00:18:31):
So you put the tuner on and you play one note, get that in tune, and then where's the next note? Oh, that was too high. Okay, lemme go back now. Do I hear it in the right place? Play the note. What does my ear tell me? Does my ear tell me that's correct or not? And then check it with the tuner. Also, when you're 17 years old, it's like, oh my gosh, it feels so tedious. And there's also a question of intonation. I'm sure you can relate to this, of how the sound is that you're producing. So you need to produce a consistent ringing sound in order for the tuner to give you a kind of steady mark. Otherwise the tuner is kind of going like this and you drive yourself crazy. So some very specific things that we worked on together with a nice arc to my four years there.
Leah Roseman (00:19:25):
And because you went to school in French, I think all the way through school, it must've felt nice to be in a bilingual city like Montreal.
Julia MacLaine (00:19:32):
Yeah, it was interesting. McGill is an anglophone university, but the city is francophone. I've often thought about the fact that we didn't have smartphones then, and I was quite shy and nervous about exploring the city. I felt like I would get out of the metro and not really know where I was, and I was scared that I'd end up in bad part of town or something. Which is funny because then I lived in New York, and you can end up in worse parts of town in New York than you can in Montreal. But I was thinking now with a smartphone, I would've been so much more confident having just access to a Google map right away. So sometimes I feel like I didn't explore as much of the city as I could have. But on the other hand, I was pretty busy with school and I was also enjoying being not at a conservatory, but at a university. I really enjoyed my, I took a lot other liberal arts classes, so I really enjoyed that too. I loved Montreal,
Leah Roseman (00:20:35):
But it's good we were in school before smartphones because we didn't have -
Julia MacLaine (00:20:38):
Oh my gosh, yes, right.
Leah Roseman (00:20:40):
The distraction of the internet wasn't there.
Julia MacLaine (00:20:46):
That would've been a also, as you say, yeah, I mean, it's hard enough to focus as it is, and yeah, can you imagine if we had had social media and trying to write papers and whatever, it would've been horrible.
Leah Roseman (00:21:02):
I guess the new generations there growing up with it. So they're learning boundaries and they're getting the benefit. So I know it's not all negative, but if I'd been thrown back in time and suddenly had access to all this, it would've been weird to say the least.
Julia MacLaine (00:21:17):
And I have children and thinking about how you approach that with your children, my parents, for instance, we didn't have a television growing up because they didn't think that was a very good use of your time. And occasionally we'd rent one and rent a VCR and watch some movies, but really it was like you come home and you spend time with your family and you play music and you read books and play games. But I did notice that when I went to friend's house or my grandparents' house next door, it was like the TV was on. I was like, whoa, that thing is really cool. Interesting to try to find the balance even as adults and as parents and for your children.
Leah Roseman (00:21:58):
So I'm curious about this no TV thing. So aside from missing pop culture references with your peers,
Julia MacLaine (00:22:04):
Yeah,
Leah Roseman (00:22:05):
I'm guessing there's nothing really you lost by not having a tv.
Julia MacLaine (00:22:10):
I don't think so. I don't think so. Yeah, I guess I would say, as an adult. Yeah, no, it was fine. I loved reading. I loved reading and I think hung on, I mean, am very capable of wasting a lot of time, but I've hung on to the idea that our time is worth something. It's valuable and spend it doing something that's going to bring you something in one way or another.
Leah Roseman (00:22:48):
So if we could go back to Preludes, you were inspired by Bonnie Hampton, cellist in New York, who was doing this idea of, well, maybe you can speak to that.
Julia MacLaine (00:23:00):
Yeah, so Bonnie, she wasn't my teacher at Julliard, but taught a couple of my friends. And so I remember going to classes with her and kind of her presence, which was always, I dunno, warm and generous. And she was kind of, I dunno, I just thought she was really cool. And she played a recital at one point where she played the six Bach Preludes, and in between them played contemporary pieces. And I just remember at that point, I guess I was, when I was starting for the first time to work closely with composers on their pieces, it's hard for me to remember. I wonder if I was kind of questioning, do I need to really specialize? Do I really need to say, okay, I'm going to be a musician who plays a lot of contemporary music because I've never felt like even with Baroque music and I don't have any training in historical performance, but I love playing. I love just holding my bow up and turning off the vibrato and turning on the phrasing and the bow. So I really like being able to move in different directions. So I wonder, maybe at that time I was kind of questioning whether that was possible. And so the fact that she played this recital where she was going back and forth between Bach and these new works probably, I don't know, just it maybe told me I don't need to make a choice and that there's a lot to be found in the bridges.
Leah Roseman (00:24:35):
Yeah, and it's interesting in terms of role models sometimes are role models or mentors are people we work with directly. And growing up in PEI, what was your image of your career as a cellist? How close is it to what you do now?
Julia MacLaine (00:24:51):
Oh, what a good question. I think that I mostly saw myself when I was younger. I was really passionate about the Sonata and concerto repertoire. I love the cello concertos. I think that we are so lucky to have these rich, soulful, even Haydn it, it's Haydn, but it's so romantic and nostalgic and beautiful and Dvorak, it's just like we're so lucky. But I also knew that it was probably a long shot to be out in the world performing those concertos. I think I probably hung on to a little bit of hope that I might get to play them once in a while. And the Sonata literature as well. And then as I think McGill was kind of more about my work or just being a cellist, the technique of being a cellist. And then when I went to New York, I started playing more chamber music. And I think there I really kind of settled into chamber music as the place where I feel like I have the most to offer and where I can hang on to my creativity, I guess, which is why I play the cello, my love for the music and my ability or responsibility to create something as I'm doing it.
(00:26:28):
And so now I have a job in an orchestra, which I also love, and I try to approach that as much as I can as chamber music. And I think that's something, I dunno if you feel this, that our orchestra does feel like chamber music, it's a little bit smaller. I think people are really intent on listening across the orchestra as much as we can and supporting each other musically and in other ways as well, of course. But I found it very important to make sure that I'm always playing chamber music and to make sure that every once in a while I play a recital. I haven't played a concerto in a few years now, and that's okay. That's all right. I've played a few of them and I keep them musically around, it's okay if I don't play them these days.
(00:27:23):
But yeah, I think the type of playing that is required for a cellist in an orchestra is very specific. And it doesn't keep you, if I can say this, it doesn't necessarily keep you in the best shape on your instrument. So I think for me, it's really important to play a recital every year. And I remember my teacher in New York saying that as well, he played in a string quartet. And even for that, he said, if I just play the string quartet the whole year, my level as a cellist is a little bit going to drop because there are just some things that aren't required in that repertoire. So he made sure he did a recital every year. So I've kind of always remembered that and try to keep that side of my playing going because it makes me a better cellist for the orchestra as well.
Leah Roseman (00:28:08):
Yup, for sure. Well, I was hoping we could include a clip of Airat Ichmouratov's Praeludium, just kind of a neo-romantic style. So how long had you known him before you commissioned this?
Julia MacLaine (00:28:22):
I have known Airat for 12 years or something. We met at Le Bic Festival near Rimouski, which is also where I met Louis-Pierre, my partner. And yeah, we played a great piece of his there. And I followed his career and his music since then. And it was funny, he was one of the, so the composers I had asked, there were kind of two phases. So three composers wrote, I dunno, one fall, and then the three other were writing the next spring. And I think he was one of the later ones. A lot of the pieces up until then had been very notey because the Bach Preludes are also notey. And I was a little bit starting to worry for my own hands and preparation. And also for the album, I was like, Airat, you've got to write me something like romantic and juicy, not that he, I mean he would've done that anyway, but I was like, please write something lyrical. And so he did. And I think it's so beautiful what he wrote.
Leah Roseman (00:29:24):
Next is a clip of Airat Ichmouratov's Praeludium.(music)
(00:31:33):
And actually did you pair, I didn't really check into this. They're each paired with a specific Prelude?
Julia MacLaine (00:31:40):
Yeah, I think as I approached the composers, I gave them the choice obviously knowing that the choices would get whittled down as each composer chose. And I also in my mind had pairings that I kind of thought people might gravitate towards. It worked out very seamlessly.
Leah Roseman (00:32:03):
And in terms of the project, I mean this came out in 2022. You had to secure grants and the record label and all this. It must have been so much preparatory work.
Julia MacLaine (00:32:16):
It was a huge amount of work. The first grant application that I wrote, I did not get, unfortunately, that was in the time when you could still call the Canada Council and ask for feedback. And they said, well, your grant is to commission all these pieces and then also to record it, it's a very big grant, why don't you try splitting in two? And so then I did that. So I applied for one grant for the commissions, and then a little bit later formulated another grant for the recording part of it. I thought I needed to, when that first grant didn't come in, I thought I need something to just make me continue going with this project. So I reached out to Marg Campbell, who was a great supporter of our orchestra and of music in Ottawa to see if she would like to commission one of the pieces.
(00:33:10):
And she did. So I thought, okay, that's great. There's at least one person that I can say that was Carmen Braden, Carmen, I've got the money for your piece. Go for it, start it. And I think that helped because then in the grant you can say, I've got some interest, I've got some support here. And even for myself, maybe you give up on a project if you don't get a grant. And if you don't get it a second time because you think, wow, where am I going to get all this money? This is such a big project. So that was one of the things I was happiest about, was just starting with this little piece from Marg and then working from there. And there were other setbacks during the whole project, not huge setbacks, but I think I really believed in the project and the idea of the album. I think it had just been about me. I don't think I would've pushed it that hard. I think I would've thought, I don't know if this is that important, but because there's a new music being created, I felt like I was kind of going to bat on behalf of the composers as well. And so anytime there was something that set me back or something that was getting a little bit laborious, it gave me the motivation to push through those moments.
Leah Roseman (00:34:30):
So Carmen Braden, I understand when you got the original score, there were no indications for interpretation.
Julia MacLaine (00:34:36):
That was really interesting back and forth and reflection with her because the music that we have from Bach, and I'm curious about the violin sonatas and partitas, if it's similar, we have indications that Anna Magdalena has written in terms of slurs and articulations, but there's a lot of debate about how specifically we should react to that. Some people say, well, she was kind of sloppy, things that are the same musically, she hasn't given the same bowing to, so she must've just kind of been in a hurry. There are other scores that I'm not as familiar with, but often as a cellist, you get the music and you're looking at an urtext blank score. And so it's kind of up to you how you want to bow it. And for listeners who aren't string players, the number of notes that you play on one bow and really affects the style the way, if it sounds more dancing or more singing, the lilt, the lines, which lines you're bringing out.
(00:36:03):
And so you can spend a lot of time going back and forth and trying out this way and then trying out that way and then making this adjustment and that adjustment. And it's quite fun actually to explore all of that. And so Carmen said, well, if I'm being inspired by Bach, how about if I give you a score that has nothing in it at all, and let me just see how you would play it, which I thought was really interesting because I tend to agree that the music is not in those indications. The music is in the notes themselves. And I also think it was very respectful of performers in the sense that a composer can write something and the interpreter, the performer has so much to bring in terms of making that music come off the page. So it was really interesting to just look at the notes and say, what kind of gesture is this? She didn't even say if things should be loud or soft. So is this a dramatic gesture? Is it loudly dramatic? Is it quietly dramatic? Is this, where is this leading to? Where is the climax? So I worked with it for a while and sent her a recording and she said, oh, that's really interesting.
(00:37:16):
I wasn't expecting like that. I really like this and that. And then she gave me a score where she did put in some markings, and I think her hope was that I would do it differently every time that I would feel free to improvise with her suggestions and with my own feeling. The way that she wrote the music is very improvisatory.
Leah Roseman (00:37:39):
You're about to hear an excerpt of Play Time by Carmen Braden.(music)
(00:37:43):
Yeah, I was thinking about what you said about the Bach suite. So for the violin, sonatas and partitas we have in his own hand, so it's different than the cellos.
Julia MacLaine (00:39:10):
I see. Yes. Okay. So it's clearer.
Leah Roseman (00:39:11):
And I do try to stick to them, but I have to say, I often think we know some conductors that to stick to the original tempo markings of Beethoven, for example, things like this, I think how often I change my mind with interpretation. So I think I, it's all suggestions. And I think most composers would welcome all kinds of different interpretations based on how you're feeling.
Julia MacLaine (00:39:35):
Absolutely. I think that all the time. And it's interesting because when we have, I guess somewhat little left from them, we want to really honor that and to understand as much about their intention as we can, which I respect. Absolutely. Then I also think he said, Hey Ludwig, how about if we play this a little faster tonight? Would that be cool? Yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:39:59):
Well, let's talk about Timothy Eddy and going to Julliard. That must've been something when you first got to New York.
Julia MacLaine (00:40:08):
Yeah, actually arriving in New York was, I took the Greyhound bus when I moved to New York, and I was really sad to leave Montreal. I cried half the bus ride. But it's good to take long travel because it gives you a chance for your emotions to adjust as well, or evolve at least in that moment. And I had my super heavy cello case and two big suitcases, and somehow got my way to the school, and I remember struggling to get off an elevator in the dorm, and this tall girl was waiting to get on the elevator and no one was helping me. And anyway, she just grabbed my suitcase and helped me off and she said, hi, I'm Claire. And she and I became really good friends. She's from South Carolina, an awesome cellist, and she studied with Bonnie Hampton.
(00:40:57):
So Julliard was awesome. I don't know if people have still have kind of negative associations with that school as being kind of a cutthroat, and I dunno, for me, my experience was not like that at all, perhaps because I was there as a Master's student a little bit older. And also I think because I was in Timothy Eddy's studio, Timothy Eddy is the cellist in the Orion string Quartet that has recently just a few months ago, retired. And he is the kindest, most respectful, considerate, just wonderful person. And I think he chooses his students not just for being good cellist, but also for being good people. And so in his studio, I felt that everyone in the studio was bringing something, had something to offer, and that we were there to appreciate and learn from each other's qualities.
(00:42:04):
I never felt any competition in a negative sense from that environment. And it's also just incredibly stimulating. There are just so many practice rooms. Everybody's practicing, everybody sounds great. It's just like New York kind of feels like that. It feels like so much is happening here, let's get to work. I lived in New York from the age of 20 to 30, which I think was the perfect time of life to be there. When you have energy to keep up with the pace of life there, I think if you don't have the energy and you sink and you see everything happening continuing to happen around you, I think it can be difficult. But for me it was just very stimulating and yeah, I loved it. Loved it.
Leah Roseman (00:42:55):
How did you balance the demands of school with the stimulation and the possibility for concerts and art and everything?
Julia MacLaine (00:43:02):
Well, fortunately, the concerts are pretty expensive, so that kind of limits itself. Although one thing that I went to all the time, my first year there, I lived in the dorm at Julliard, so literally the Metropolitan Opera is my backyard. And so I would go get $12 standing tickets there and go stand at the very, very top, nobody further back and go see all these operas that I'd never seen, and it just blew my mind. I remember seeing a marriage of Figaro there and just hearing the bass line in the overture, just sparkling all the way up to the back of the hall and the Contessa Arias. It was just stunning. So I went to that a lot and to jazz clubs when we could. Yeah, it was hard. It's always hard to balance life and school when you're in school, and I didn't always do. I do a better job of it now at the age of 42 than I did then I probably went out too much in the beginning of the week and then a few days before my lesson thought, oh geez, I'd better practice a bit more.
Leah Roseman (00:44:23):
Hi. Just a short break from the episode, which I hope you're enjoying so far. I wanted to let you know that I have a new way you can support this independent podcast through a collection of merch with a very cool, unique and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly. You'll find that link in the description of the episode. If you want to check out over a hundred episodes you may have missed in addition to your podcast player or YouTube, I have an extensive website, leahroseman.com with show notes, transcripts, the complete catalog of episodes, and you can sign up there for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak peaks of upcoming guests. Please do share your favorite episodes with your friends, follow me on social media and share my posts. And if you can spare a few dollars to help support the series, that would be amazing. You'll find that link in the show notes along with the merch store. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. Now, back to the episode.
(00:45:15):
So you chose composers from pretty different stylistic backgrounds, and Roy Johnstone is a fiddler, so it'd be nice to include a clip of his No. 6 Post Bach.
Julia MacLaine (00:45:27):
Yeah, Roy, I grew up listening to Roy play in Prince Edward Island. He's a beautiful, beautiful fiddler, and I always thought his bow arm was just so loose and everything just kind of swings out of his bow, and I've always thought, gosh, I wish I could figure out how to have that kind of a loose bow arm. I know that he's a very curious musician and open to a lot of things. So I reached out to him and thought I wanted the composers generally to kind of represent different parts of my life or different interests of mine, and to be just very varied. So it made a lot of sense to include something from PEI and something from a folk perspective. I thought that would be interesting. And I've also always thought that the D major prelude kind of had a folk feeling to it. So that was one pairing that I suggested.
Leah Roseman (00:46:30):
This is a clip of No. 6 Post Bach by Roy Johnstone. (music)
(00:47:52):
I was thinking about PEI and New York. A previous guest of the series is Matt Zimbel. So he had moved from New York at the age of 14, I think, to PEI in the middle of winter.
Julia MacLaine (00:48:01):
Really?
Leah Roseman (00:48:01):
Yeah. So his parents, they'd been there on holiday and they thought, oh, what a beautiful place.
Julia MacLaine (00:48:06):
Ooh - and then the winter.
Leah Roseman (00:48:08):
Yeah! I've been on holiday to PEI actually four times in my life. I love it there, but I've never been there in the winter. And I can imagine the contrast
Julia MacLaine (00:48:18):
That was part of the loneliness growing up there is that in the winter it really shuts down and maybe a little bit less now than in those days, but all the restaurants close, everybody leaves. The weather, ivzt's not nice and crisp and even snow. It's always kind of blowing and drifting and then freezing rain and this and that and the power goes out. So it's an interesting place in the winter.
Leah Roseman (00:48:51):
Well, we talked about your time in New York and you did some pretty interesting projects. I know it's a while back, but I'd read that you'd done an immersive project at the Museum of Natural History, marrying your love of different art forms. Do you want to speak to that project?
Julia MacLaine (00:49:05):
Yeah, so that was part of a fellowship that I was involved in at the time. It was called the Academy, a program of Carnegie Hall, a CJW, the Julliard School and the Weill Music Institute. And so it was an effort, and it still exists and it's going on, it's still called the Academy. It is a kind of New World, but for chamber music and community engagement, I guess. So an opportunity for young professionals just coming out of school to play chamber music and to figure out how to get involved in music education and community projects in an interesting way. And so I was involved in not the very first year, but there was a pilot year, and then the first year after that, and they offered us a grant, you could apply for a grant to do a kind of community chamber music project. And so with a few other fellows, we developed a project around George Crumb's work, Voice of the Whale, which is a very evocative piece with theatrical indications.
(00:50:20):
So you've got a pianist, a flutist, and a cellist who are wearing masks to make them less human. They're supposed to be bathed in blue light, and we create all these beautiful underwater sounds and ocean sounds. So you've got some bird calls, you've got whale sounds. Obviously this was inspired by the first recording, heard of a humpback whale singing. The pianist is putting all sorts of things inside the piano to make the, so prepared piano. It sounds really ethereal and otherworldly. And so we thought, how can we take this piece that's supposed to be immersive and make it even more immersive? And the Natural History Museum in New York has the great, I think it's the Millstein Hall of Ocean Life. It's this huge room with a life size replica of a blue whale above, and it's dark and they're blue. It's all in blue light, and either all these dioramas of other ocean life around.
(00:51:26):
And so we approached the Museum of Natural History and decided to do a concert there with some other music inspired by Ocean Life. And it turned out that Fabien and Céline Cousteau, who are the grandchildren of Jacques Cousteau, were giving a presentation on Orca migration roots at that time. And so we asked Fabien to come, my father's a poet, so we asked him to write a poem about humpback whales. And then he and Fabien Cousteau read this poem together. And another friend of ours is a visual artist, so he did live painting that was projected on a screen behind us. His name is Kevork Mourad, M-O-U-R-A-D. I strongly encourage you to go look up his, you can find videos of him doing live painting to music, and it's just magical what he does.
(00:52:15):
We did in connection with that, we did a project in a nearby school where we kind of guided the children to writing their own poems and making their own art inspired by music and sounds of the ocean. So that was also a huge amount of work and quite stressful and working with all these big partners and coordinating everything. But it was a really great experience to learn how to do that and to have the support of Carnegie Hall behind us and the Museum of Natural History. And yeah, I think there's some things that maybe could have been different or better, but that's how life goes. You learn, not that it was bad, but there are just a few things that we could have improved or done differently. So keep those in mind for the next time.
Leah Roseman (00:53:10):
And that's always a problem with one-offs too.
Julia MacLaine (00:53:12):
Yeah, you don't have the opportunity. Yeah,
Leah Roseman (00:53:16):
And I have found over my career as an orchestral musician when I do play chamber music too often, it's like all this work for one performance.
Julia MacLaine (00:53:25):
Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Yeah,
(00:53:27):
That's nuts. I remember the first time with some friends, this was a project in New York called Music for Farms. And so we had chamber music concert that we were doing four times, and I was playing actually a piece that I wrote for cello and djembe, and it was quite hard. And I remember the first night I was kind of nervous, and then we had a second concert and I was backstage thinking like, oh, I don't know if I can do this. I'm kind of nervous. And I was like, wait, I do know that I can do it. I did it yesterday. And that's such a different feeling. And I felt so at that moment envious of people who were on long tours actually, because you have the opportunity to really settle into the repertoire and to feel comfortable with performing it and to have your interpretation evolve. I mean, you can do that without that performances as well, but it's a different situation.
Leah Roseman (00:54:21):
So have you recorded that piece for cello and djembe?
Julia MacLaine (00:54:27):
I think there might be a recording of a performance somewhere. I couldn't find it recently, but no, not properly. Okay. I did play it recently with the musician up here.
Leah Roseman (00:54:38):
I was going to ask you about your composition and writing and songwriting. You took a songwriting workshop with Ian Tamblyn, right?
Julia MacLaine (00:54:48):
Yeah. So Ian Tamblyn is for, I mean, I'm sure many people know for those who don't, he's a kind of great Canadian songwriter, incredibly prolific, and I actually didn't know him, but some friends were taking, or a friend an acquaintance was taking a songwriting workshop with him. And it was something that I'd always enjoyed writing poetry, and I'd written some music, but I've always loved songs. Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon. And so it was on Monday evenings. It was a time that kind of worked for us. And so I thought, okay, I'll just go and see how this is. And Ian is an amazing teacher also. He will talk about song. Each class he had some element that he would be highlighting about success of a certain songwriter or what made something work or didn't. And then he had great activities in the classes to help us just generate ideas.
(00:55:56):
And then weekly assignments that were also, it's just so helpful to have somebody say one day he came in with a stack of New Yorker magazines and he passed them out and he said, okay, write something, write a song about the cover on this magazine. Or I dunno, he has a book about songwriting ideas and he picked specific ideas for each one of us. And so just to have somebody give you a very specific thing to write about or in a specific style, or sometimes he'll say, write a list song, a song that is a list of things. So that was really great just to have a deadline and an idea.
(00:56:38):
I really enjoy the creativity behind both writing words and songs and composing more classical music. I don't think I'm all that good at it. I think that I always come up in my hobbies like that against the idea that I'm really better as a cellist, that I have so much more or background and study and experience. And I don't think that means that I shouldn't do the other. But I find it hard to be a beginning composer really at the beginning. And sometimes again, my judgment and my criteria is so high. So I write something, I'm like, well, that's pretty bad. You can try to write something else. I find it hard to get away from the judgment, my own judgment of what I'm writing. There are moments when I do, there are moments when I feel like, oh, I know what I'm saying here, and I dunno, maybe it doesn't fit into this style or that style. And I'm at peace with that because I feel confident in the idea. So I like those moments.
Leah Roseman (00:57:48):
I was just talking to a songwriter yesterday and he was talking about the mental game and always doubting what he was writing, but persisting. I wanted to ask you about, not necessarily imposter syndrome, but in terms of the mental game as a performer, I think what we do as primarily orchestral musicians is very tricky in terms of the perfectionism required and subsuming your own instincts musically. There's so many specific challenges we have.
Julia MacLaine (00:58:23):
Yeah. I recently came to a crisis with perfectionism where I just thought, how is it that we spend so much time trying to be so perfect? Really? I think this was kind of after, at the end of my year long maternity leave where you're in diapers, you're in this world that's so much more basic and maybe raw, and I couldn't imagine going back to the orchestra and practicing so that this attack would be this way and that would be this way. And it just seemed so fussy to me. I was like, can't we just play? Why does it need to be so perfect all the time? And then I don't remember what I was, oh, I do remember it was Dvorak.
(00:59:19):
What's that piece called? It's really beautiful piece by Dvorak, Silent Woods that I was playing with Carson for a recital. And it's not that hard. It's just a kind of simple slow piece. And then I just remember I'd go downstairs, the baby would be asleep, and I'd go down to the basement, I'd practice it and practice it and practice it because I felt like there was an opportunity, a seven minute opportunity to create something so beautiful for the people who were listening. And so that was really my way back into accepting the amount of work that we put in because I thought, well, if I can be really open and not squeeze when I get up to the high parts or really know where this phrase is going, and if I know where the super special, soft moment is and don't make three soft special moments, but only one, then that one's really going to feel special to everybody. So it was the feeling that there's an opportunity to make things really beautiful or really exciting or really dramatic or whatever it is. That kind of brought me back to, that's why we practice so much, and it's because we have to feel so at ease with things in order to convey that much. And also because it's hard playing an instrument and playing this music is very difficult. And so if you're not very comfortable, then you won't be able to convey it the way that you're hoping to
Leah Roseman (01:00:58):
Beautifully expressed.
Julia MacLaine (01:00:59):
I know.
Leah Roseman (01:00:59):
Wow. I've heard you speak, I believe you don't take the time to teach with having two young children and everything.
Julia MacLaine (01:01:09):
I have one adult student who lives in New York who I teach on Zoom every Monday morning. But yeah, that's about it. But yeah,
Leah Roseman (01:01:17):
No, I heard you once speak. We were on a panel together, it was for a mock audition. And I remember writing down what Julia was saying. I thought, wow,
Julia MacLaine (01:01:25):
Oh dear.
Leah Roseman (01:01:26):
She speaks about music so articulately. I need to remember the way she expressed these ideas. And I couldn't find those notes. I did keep them, but it had to do with talking to somebody about the line because too often people don't have trouble with that. It's one of the main challenges, even very accomplished players have.
Julia MacLaine (01:01:46):
Yeah, I do kind of remember that. I wonder if it's a little bit what I was talking about earlier with the Elgar and kind of making sure that you really know where you're headed and that if you're trying to make an even crescendo, that every note is really getting bigger and that you're saving your deepest, playing, your longest bow, your most weight into the bow. I don't know if this was what was in those notes, I'd to see those notes, but to me, the line is important. Our colleague, Carissa, who I've played with quite a bit, she always says that I always come back to the big picture. I'm always looking for the big moments to understand where we're headed. And ironically, when I listen, actually, when I listen to some of my own recordings, I find that I still don't quite deliver. I wish. Sometimes I feel that there's a buildup and I don't quite land on the moment that we really want to hear. So I dunno, maybe in the next 10 years I can follow my own advice and actually do it.
Leah Roseman (01:03:02):
Yeah. Well, it's hard with recording because you want to have that document there, but of course things are in flux and every day is going to be different, so you have to let go of that.
Julia MacLaine (01:03:17):
Yeah. I found that really interesting about recording was, I mean, the reason that I wanted to record was that it feels painful to me to have every performance be ephemeral and all the work that I do evaporate as the notes die. And sometimes some things don't go so well, and you're kind of grateful for it. And then sometimes you're like, oh, wow, I played so great. And that's just gone with the moment. And of course, there's something beautiful to that. But I am also drawn to more tangible crafts like cooking and gardening and things that have a more immediate and tangible impact. So that was one of the reasons I wanted to make a CD. And yet I was also very keenly aware that you're creating something lasting, but it is still a snapshot of who you were and what your interpretation was at that period, and more specifically how you felt on that day and how things went on that day. And it all changes so much. And I think, I don't know, maybe it was Mischa Maisky who heard an earlier version of his own Bach, and he was like, wow, that's not how I play that anymore.
(01:04:33):
Thank goodness we evolve. Yeah.
Leah Roseman (01:04:36):
Now you also commissioned a piece from Nicole Lizée, and as an orchestra, we've performed her music quite a bit. And it was interesting to hear because definitely her language is very specific. Is that piece as hard as it sounds to put together with the electronics?
Julia MacLaine (01:04:51):
Yeah, it's quite difficult. And I think, I mean, it's very well written in the sense that the moments when the cello comes in, it's very clear what I'm following, or there are cues, so it's not like I'm not swimming, but there are these changes in tempo that are, they're gradual, but then they shift suddenly to something else. You'll remember from some of the things that we've played, and those are hard to do without a conductor and with a track that you're listening to. And also some of the electronic sounds. At some point I needed to be lining up with a kind of low bass sound at the end that I couldn't even hear. And it was Carl, the engineer. He was like, oh yeah, he can hear it for sure. And so I think he helped me with that. And there's also singing and clapping that I did as a layer because it was too much for me to handle recording. And at some point playing thirds and then also singing one of the lines that wasn't going to sound very good if I did them at the same time.
Leah Roseman (01:05:57):
Yeah, I was curious about that.
Julia MacLaine (01:05:58):
Yeah.
Leah Roseman (01:06:01):
You're about to hear a clip from Prayers for Ruins by Nicole Lizée. (music)
(01:06:44):
Well, we've talked a little bit about balancing life, and we have this in common that, well, my children are now adults, but you have two young children. We both have partners in the same orchestra. And some challenges that I've run into that I like to ask people about is what decisions do you make around your kids and arts education, especially with you, because you had a mother who was a musician who I think kind of pushed you in a positive way, right?
Julia MacLaine (01:07:10):
Yeah. I mean, my parents were great about offering me that world, and I think I loved it. And so they encouraged me. I remember not wanting to practice, not really knowing how to practice, and therefore not wanting to do it. And my mother, instead of pushing me or forcing me to do it, she'd say, oh, well, okay, you can just quit then. And then I'd burst into tears, oh, I don't want to quit the cello. So reverse psychology was her, was her trick. So our eldest son, Robin, plays a cello. He studies with me, which is dubious as a choice, I feel. It's not really about I'm a cellist, and therefore you also need to be a cellist. It's about, this is something that I share with you. This is something that we can enjoy together.
(01:08:21):
And yet it can be really challenging because as you know, your expectations that you have with your children are different. You speak to them in a way that you wouldn't speak to another child. Robin is very tolerant and patient, and he's kind of angelic. So he puts up with a lot from us, but the way we do it is kind of nice. And now he, he's a little bit older, and so he's able to have some independence with his practice. And there are great books called Cello Time Joggers and Cello Time Runners that have a CD, so that we have a book where he can play those pieces with me with a second cello part. But he also has a CD that he can put on, and they're like drums and stuff, and he really likes the pieces. And so often he can go up and just play by himself, and he turns on the CD and he can get his cello out and have a good time.
(01:09:18):
And then sometimes I'll go up and offer tips or we'll play duets together. I don't, I mean it's really beautiful to see a child's ear. He hears so much when we listen to music. He remembers music. At some point, we were listening to the Brahms Horn Trio in the car, and the next day he was whistling the Scherzo from the Brahms horn trio after hearing it once, where he'll come home and figure out stuff on the piano. And I'm sure all of our colleagues' kids have the same kind of just attention to music in their ears. So that's really beautiful to see. I don't feel any need to push him into a career in music. I'm kind of curious to see what his interests will be in a more serious way. But I feel like a career in music has been, and we're kind of some of the lucky ones.
(01:10:14):
We have a stable job in a beautiful city, and we still find it really challenging, as you were saying, the work life balance, being out in the evenings several times a week with young children who don't let us sleep in, we're exhausted. We're so tired. It's a strain for childcare, and that becomes a financial strain. So even though we're in this very fortunate situation, we find it very difficult. So it's not something that I would encourage anyone to do unless they were really passionate about it. And then I would absolutely encourage them to do it.
Leah Roseman (01:10:53):
Yeah. Now, in terms of choosing, well, we talked about choosing repertoire when you're a student. I had a conversation with you a few months ago and you were saying how you kind of avoided virtuoso repertoire growing up.
Julia MacLaine (01:11:10):
So when I was growing up, my strength as musician as a cellist was lyrical stuff. I like playing long, slow, pretty melodies. And I didn't really fast stuff. I also didn't like it musically. I thought it was kind of vain show pieces, but I dunno, chicken or egg, maybe it's because I couldn't do it, that I didn't like it. Maybe if I had had a lot of facility, I would've enjoyed kind of showing off in that way. And it's interesting in some ways, I think my playing has done a little bit of a 180 in the sense that these days I feel a little bit more comfortable. I mean, I wouldn't want to get and play super Tchaikovsky Pezzo Capriccioso or something that's not really fun for me. It's hard. I feel kind of stressed when I'm doing something like that. But I do feel these days a little bit more at ease with lighter, faster music.
(01:12:16):
And then it was coming back to that Dvorak Silent Woods where I was like, wow, I really need to get back. Or it would be nice to get back in touch with the side of me that used to just love playing a big melody. And so it used to be that long, slow melodies, my bow wouldn't shake. I would just kind of feel really relaxed. And then the shorter, faster stuff, I would start getting nervous. And now it's almost the opposite. The long slow stuff, I feel like I kind of end up pressing a little bit more. And so it's been nice lately to just get back into a place where I'm really opening, I'm just looking for openness and how can I open into the big moments and those pieces and know where I'm going. But yeah, when I'm programming a recital, I'll try to choose, first of all, not too many pieces that are new to me.
(01:13:10):
So maybe only one big piece that is really new to me because I am realizing how different that feels. It took me a while to realize that when you've played a sonata out a few times, even if it's been a long time, it's kind of the language is in there and you feel like you're kind of going down a path that's been traveled before and a new piece for the first time in a concert, even if you've practiced it and rehearsed, it feels a little bit like an adventure. And so you don't want too much of an adventure in one recital. And yeah, I also would choose some things that are a little bit challenging for me technically, but not the whole program. And I would also try to choose more, choose things that put me in my best light or where I'm able to offer the most. So it kind of feels more, I dunno, feels like a balanced diet.
Leah Roseman (01:14:09):
How do you deal with performance nerves, when they come up?
Julia MacLaine (01:14:15):
Yeah, that's a great question. Performance nerves are useful and very challenging. When I was at Juilliard, I took some classes with Don Greene, who's a well-known sports psychologist, who has kind of shifted also and done work with a lot of musicians. And I remember playing a jury slash audition at the end of that year. And so that's like everything was super hard that I was playing. And I remember the visualization and the relaxation and the focusing techniques and the building up of the confidence over the last months, I really felt it kind of all come together on this jury, and I played really well. I was really very happy with that moment.
(01:15:09):
So yeah, all of those techniques, obviously being very prepared, obviously having some kind of breath control. So a simple, I remember Rachel and I have a little tiny little solo in Tchaikovsky piano concerto, like two cellos, but it's really high and kind of awkward. And I remember feeling really kind of nervous before that. And I just start box breathing in the first part of that movement. It's like slow notes. So just on one bar, I breathe in on the next bar, I hold on the next bar, I breathe out and the next bar I hold. And visualization, I think is a really powerful tool.
(01:15:54):
A recital recently that I was playing. And there was this moment in Janacek Pohadka, a beautiful piece. And there was just one thing. Often what'll happen is I can play things in my practice room, but then you get nervous and then you might miss it in the concert. But in this case, I was missing it in rehearsal and in my own practicing all the time, it was just like, I don't know, something about the interval or the shift. And it was just never really working. And I thought, okay, I don't know. I've practiced it every way. I've tried different bows. I've tried shifting on the old bow, the new bow thinking and harmonically. So I thought, okay, maybe I'll just sit down and visualize it. And I realized that in my mind, I was hearing the mistake. I was hearing the way that I miss it, it was in my brain path. And so I sat down and I really tried to imagine the music happening without the mistake. And that's a really crazy moment when you realize that your brain is leading you to the error and how difficult it is to correct the mistake. And so then if you can imagine it correctly in your mind anyways, and it worked in the concert, it went well.
(01:17:08):
Yeah. But it's a constant battle. I feel maybe more comfortable than I did before. I at least know that I can still perform when I'm nervous that my nervous performance is still okay. But for me, it hasn't ever really gone away. And again, chamber music helps me if I'm with other people, if I listen to the other parts. And that's, I guess maybe the other big thing is just getting in touch with, this comes from Tim Eddy, my deepest feelings about the music. What is the urgency of the message that needs to be communicated here, and how passionately do I feel about that? And that kind of deep feeling about the music is stronger than feelings of ego, which are the ones that lead you to feeling nervous.
Leah Roseman (01:18:06):
Yeah, that's great. Well, I was curious to ask in terms of your creativity, if you improvise on the cello
Julia MacLaine (01:18:15):
Really poorly. So with Ian Tamblyn, the songwriter that we were talking about, he's invited me to play on, I played on an album of his, and I've played a couple of shows with him. And then out of that, played with some other singer songwriters in the area. And so those performances start without any kind of music. Maybe there's a chord chart if I'm lucky. So yeah, I did find myself a couple of times on a stage without music prepared, just kind of seeing the chords in front of me and improvising. And I actually enjoy that more in the recording sessions because there are moments when I can be like, okay, I'll just kind of follow my ear and see what comes out, knowing that it can go in the can if it needs to. But I really wish that I had more tools at hand. I can really hear how I do all the beginner mistakes I play all the time. I play whole notes and half notes and quarter notes. It's really hard to vary the rhythm, so I do not improvise well, but I have tried. But you do.
Leah Roseman (01:19:35):
Yeah. But I'm doing free improv. It's very different.
Julia MacLaine (01:19:41):
So that doesn't have a chord structure necessarily or
Leah Roseman (01:19:44):
Exactly. Yeah. We're not playing over chord changes. We will arrive at a pulse, but sometimes that'll completely change. I mean, it's just very different kind of music making. Yeah. But it's very,
Julia MacLaine (01:19:57):
That must be very freeing. Yeah,
Leah Roseman (01:19:59):
Exactly. Yeah. Especially coming from this classical music background and particularly the, well, maybe I keep saying the orchestral world, but of course for soloists, it's always the same kind of specificity that we have to engage with.
Julia MacLaine (01:20:12):
Yeah. I do remember once at Mannes, I did a diploma there after my master's degree with some friends. We would get together at the very end of the day in the evening in a practice room, turn out the lights, and this was like piano trombone, viola and cello or something, and just total free improv. That was pretty fun. So
Leah Roseman (01:20:32):
You have done it?
Julia MacLaine (01:20:34):
I have. It's been a while.
Leah Roseman (01:20:37):
Well, it was really great getting to know you better today, Julia. And thanks bringing your story and your music to the wider world.
Julia MacLaine (01:20:45):
Well, thank you for the thoughtful questions.
Leah Roseman (01:20:49):
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Pleased to share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support the series, that would be wonderful. The link is in the description. Have a wonderful week.
