opportunity for motivated East Bay students

Nice to see everyone at VIOLAMANIA!!!! I hope you had as much of a blast as I did! What a wonderful night! What great playing! What a crowd! What a feeling to be with so many like-minded people!


Here's a little advertising-- If you have students who have studied for at least a year and have a little theory or maybe an advanced one that needs a lot of challenge and they live anywhere near North Berkeley or can get to the North Berkeley BART, here's the thing for them.


Crowden Center for Music in the Community's John Adams Young Composer Program has openings for serious music students ages 7-18. Includes weekly private lessons with professional composers, weekly workshops and seminars, and performances of students works by professional ensembles.

More info at: http://crowden.org/CCMC/Programs/fall_spring.htm#YoungComposers


Viola Jokes

Some would argue no viola website is complete without a collection of viola jokes. The famous viola joke on display below was recently sent to me from a composer friend and colleague. Countless other viola jokes are available online at a variety of websites, like this one: http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/viola-jokes.html; and this one: http://members.cox.net/datimp/viola.html. Comment on this post to add your own favorite...

Setting up for the Don Freund 'Fanfare'

This photo of one moment of ViolaMania! from the audience p.o.v. was just shared with us, so we're sharing it with you! Do you have a photo or video from ViolaMania worth sharing with the world? Send it our way and we'll add it to the collection. Thanks in advance for any and all submissions!




ViolaMania Videos

To start: a teaser-trailer... just some short -and unsteady, sorry! - snippets of the
program...


And then - the complete Telemann viola concerto, in four separate movements -
these were put up on YouTube by the family of one student who had attended
and joined in... Madeline Prager gave us a fun first-cadenza solo in the first movement...



The third movement's cadenza was raffled off prior to beginning the concerto; the winning ticket belonged to ViolaMania co-coordinator Katrina Wreede, who was playing the 4th Viola part in the orchestra (she had arranged the orchestral quartet herself). For whatever reason we quickly decided to draw another ticket to get someone to join her on a double-cadenza, and that winning ticket belonged to Jeremy Cohen of Quartet San Francisco. So when the time came, we got a seriously jazzed up - 'short but sweet' - Andante cadenza duet performed by two former Turtle Island String Quartet violists.. check it out...