Bion Tsang: The Blue Rock Sessions: My lifelong obsession with virtuoso miniatures found a creative landing in Texas Hill Country at the picturesque Blue Rock Artist Ranch and Studio, only 25 miles from my home in Austin. For three decades I have spent countless hours listening to Casals, Piatigorsky, Heifetz, Stern and others who have loved these melodies and performed them with virtuosity, artistry and sincerity. As a student more than 20 years ago, I began transcribing Casals recordings of character pieces, sometimes with a piano score, other times, a blank page. Transitioning from pupil to performer, I added some of my favorite violin miniatures as well. Collecting these 18 treasures to be both heard and seen is a dream come true. Retreat with me as we turn over these gems again. Welcome to The Blue Rock Sessions. Forward: “These pieces are miniatures, as you call them. And I like that word, by the way. Because when I heard Casals play them, I was entranced. In the span of a few minutes, there is a whole world there.” As we listen together to the 18 pieces featuring cello and piano comprising Bion Tsang: The Blue Rock Sessions, the internationally acclaimed concert cellist and University of Texas at Austin professor pauses a moment, smiles and lingers over the word “miniatures.” Like a child transfixed by the intricacies of an N-gauge train set or a meticulously assembled model airplane, Bion savors the idea of the miniature and the possibilities for expressive detail, varied character and deeply personal expression that the word and these pieces conjure up for him. Contained within these compact compositions, ranging from about 2 to 6 minutes in length, is a treasure trove of musical memories, interpretive insights, peerless pedagogy and deeply satisfying music making. It’s a project that was 20 years in the making for Bion Tsang, and, curiously, for a collection that so perfectly captures cello playing at the highest level, contains very few pieces written originally for the instrument. Cellists have always had to be creative when it comes to finding pieces to play. Where are the cello concertos by Beethoven, Mozart or Brahms? They don’t exist. So for Bion, borrowing from the rich violin repertory is a viable solution to the scarcity of material afforded to cellists. Bion spent his childhood years listening to violinists like Isaac Stern, Jascha Heifetz, and Josef Hassid, a largely forgotten Polish violinist who died in 1950 at age 36. Hassid’s subtle approach to rubato in the Dvorak “Humoresque,” Stern’s soul-stirring glissandos embellishing Tchaikovsky’s ravishing melody “None but the Lonely Heart,” and Heifetz’s dazzling technique captured in Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance,” all served Bion as inspiring models of musicianship and virtuosity. Over the years Bion has carefully studied and meticulously transferred his experiences with these recordings to the medium of the cello. His collection of cello transcriptions drawn from opera, ballet, piano repertory and a small selection of pieces actually originally written for the instrument (Saint-Saens’ iconic “The Swan” and two Rachmaninoff selections for cello and piano) are among the brief, but memorable, miniatures he brilliantly displays here. It was a cellist, the Catalan-born Pablo Casals (1876-1973), whose playing and recordings had an important role in nurturing Bion’s love of the musical miniature. As a doctoral student working with Aldo Parisot at Yale University, Bion spent hours listening to performances of short pieces by Casals preserved in the Yale collection of historical sound recordings. As he listened carefully through the surface noise of these old recordings, some made as early as 1915, Bion heard examples of Casals’ interpretive imagination and technical facility that still inspire him to this day. In these old recordings Casals frequently departed from printed musical scores and spontaneously added scales, embellishments and subtle tempo fluctuations to his interpretations of the music. Bion’s careful listening yielded meticulous transcriptions of Casals’ added notes and ideas. At first Bion wrote down what he was hearing in pencil in the margins and in between the staves of the sheet music. He continued polishing and refining his transcriptions and shaped them into what became his doctoral thesis at Yale. Three of those Casals transcriptions now find their way onto Bion Tsang: The Blue Rock Sessions. “Serenata Napoletana” by the long-forgotten Giovanni Sgambati (1841-1914) is one of Bion’s “all-time favorite Casals recordings.” This is Casals at his most imaginative, inventive and playful. The allure of the world of the miniature becomes especially clear when Bion talks about the experience of encountering this Sgambati/Casals gem as a Yale graduate student. “You kind of have to hear it to believe it. Generally these pieces just have one character. But this piece has so many characters in the span of 3 minutes. Casals was as good as anyone in terms of doing that. He was like a stage actor going from one role to another. It’s like he’s doing Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” by himself. It’s a one man show kind of thing...but in just three minutes!” As the musical narrative of the Sgambati Serenata unfolds, one hears sounds of coy flirtation rendered on the cello. Slithering scales and sinuous embellishments of melody evoke the aspiring lovers’ furtive glances and arched eyebrows. Subtlety eventually gives way to more ardent proclamations of undying love. Elegantly executed slides bring to mind the sounds of stifled cries and sobs as the pursuer’s passion can no longer be contained. Bion’s transcription and performance employs details like the lover tuning up a guitar in preparation for the musical seduction to follow. Here Bion’s detailed notations of the irregular rhythms played pizzicato by Pablo Casals in the opening of “Serenata Napoletana” are key to capturing Casals inventive and imaginative interpretation. While this recording is a feast for the ears, Bion saw to it that there would also be meticulous video documentation of these 18 cello miniatures. Beautifully filmed at the picturesque Blue Rock Artist Ranch, the videos offer a visual demonstration that this collection of the art of the miniature is borne of a lifetime of disciplined technical study of the instrument and musical refinement. As our conversation delved further into his early musical influences, Bion remembered puzzling over recordings by Mstislav Rostropovich, listening intently to figure out how the cellist’s particular bow placement or fingering of the instrument created such stunning effects. The videos give young cellists studying now an opportunity to see in detail for themselves what a downbow staccato rendered in the style of Gregor Piatigorsky looks, feels and sounds like and how a cellist’s body language signals a subtle moving ahead or pulling back of tempo (pianist Cecilia Lo-Chien Kao reads those signals exquisitely in this project). They show an aspiring young player a beautiful bow hand formed in the studio of cellist Leonard Rose and the perfectly rounded and angled fingers of a skilled cellist negotiating the highest registers of the instrument. Whether you’re a student of the instrument encountering these pieces for the first time, or a seasoned cello connoisseur, you’ll savor every second of these musical miniatures played so brilliantly here by Bion Tsang. Dave Beck—cellist/host at Classical KING FM 98.1 Public Radio, Seattle Biography: Cellist Bion Tsang is internationally recognized as one of the outstanding instrumentalists of his generation: among his many honors are an Avery Fisher Career Grant, an MEF Career Grant and the Bronze Medal in the IX International Tchaikovsky Competition. Mr. Tsang earned a 2010 Grammy nomination for his performance on the 2009 PBS special A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert(Harmonia Mundi). Mr. Tsang has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as the New York, Moscow and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestras, the National, American, Pacific, Delaware and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras, the Saint Paul and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestras, the Louisville Orchestra and the Taiwan National Orchestra. Recent highlights include making his solo debuts at Orchestra Hall in Chicago with Zubin Mehta and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and at the Esplanade in Boston with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra. He also gave the U.S. premiere of the Enescu Symphonie Concertante, Op. 8 with the American Symphony Orchestra in Avery Fisher Hall and the U.S. premiere of Tan Dun’s Crouching Tiger Concerto for Cello Solo and Chamber Orchestra at Atlanta’s Symphony Hall. Tsang makes his Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra debut this season. As a chamber musician, Mr. Tsang has collaborated with such artists as violinists Pamela Frank, Jaime Laredo, Cho-Liang Lin, Anne Akiko Meyers, Kyoko Takezawa and Chee Yun, violist Michael Tree, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bassist Gary Karr and pianist Leon Fleisher. He has been a frequent guest artist of the Boston Chamber Music Society, Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music International of Dallas, Fort Worth Chamber Music Society, Da Camera of Houston, Camerata Pacifica of Los Angeles and Bargemusic in New York and performed at such festivals as Marlboro Music Festival, the Cape Cod, Tucson, Portland and Seattle Chamber Music Festivals, the Bard Festival, Bravo! Colorado, Music in the Vineyards and the Laurel Festival of the Arts, where he served as Artistic Director for ten years. Mr. Tsang’s discography includes the 2010 release from Artek Recordings, Bion Tsang and Anton Nel: Live in Concert, Brahms Cello Sonatas and Four Hungarian Dances, featuring original transcriptions of Joseph Joachim’s violin arrangements of Brahms’ iconic Hungarian melodies. His discography also includes the Kodaly works for solo cello as well as a forthcoming set of the complete Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello recorded on the 1713 “Bass of Spain” Stradivarius. He has performed all six Bach Suites in one sitting first in Austin and later in Seattle at Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall. In addition, Mr. Tsang has toured the complete Beethoven works for cello and piano with pianist Anton Nel in, among other venues, the new Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and Jordan Hall in Boston, with the latter performance recorded and commercially released on the Artek label. A versatile collaborator, Mr. Tsang was featured on the soundtrack to Recapturing Cuba: An Artist’s Journey, a PBS documentary by Trinity Films, winning two Gold Medals—Director’s Choice and Artistic Excellence—at the Park City Film Music Festival, coincident to the Sundance Film Festival. He was a featured guest artist on the KLRU-TV and PBS television production, A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert, filmed in Dell Hall at the Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin, and aired nationally on PBS stations during their March 2009 pledge drives. Tsang has also been featured on KLRU-TV’s In Context recorded in the Austin City Limits studio, the first time classical musicians appeared in that space. A frequent collaborator with the Hong Kong City Contemporary Dance Company, he has performed solo cello onstage alongside the dancers in productions of There, After…(Kodaly Op. 8 Solo Sonata) and Plaza X (Bach Solo Suites). Mr. Tsang made his professional debut at age eleven in two concerts with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic. That same year he returned to perform two more concerts with Maestro Mehta and the Philharmonic. One of these performances was broadcast worldwide on the CBS Festival of Lively Arts television series. While still in his teens, he became the youngest cellist ever to receive a Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Prize and the youngest recipient ever of an Artists International Award. He was also chosen as a Finalist of the NFAA’s Arts Recognition and Talent Search and subsequently as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts. At age nineteen, Tsang became the youngest cellist to win a prize in the VIII International Tchaikovsky Competition. He has been featured on America Online as CultureFinder’s “Star Find of the Week,” on the Internet Cello Society as “Artist of the Month,” and most recently in print in the book 21st-Century Cellists. Born in Michigan of Chinese parents, Bion Tsang began piano studies at age six and cello at age seven. The following year, he entered The Juilliard School. Tsang received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and his Master of Musical Arts degree from Yale University, where he studied with Aldo Parisot. His other principal cello teachers have included Ardyth Alton, Luis Garcia-Renart, William Pleeth, Channing Robbins, and Leonard Rose. Mr. Tsang resides in Austin, TX where he is Division Head of Strings and holds the Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long Chair in Cello at the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin. He was the recipient of the Texas Exes Teaching Award after just his first year of service and in 2004-05 was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by the Austin Critics Table. In 2005-06 he was also visiting professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. In his spare time, Bion helps his family run the Paul J. Tsang Foundation, a nonprofit organization named in honor of Bion’s father and formed to help facilitate educational or career opportunities for promising students and professionals in the arts and sciences. He also enjoys coaching and, especially, trying to keep up with the various adventures and endeavors of his three children: Bailey, Henry and Maia. Mr. Tsang plays on a Wayne Burak workbench series cello made in April 2011.