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The past month has been one of the most intense and exciting of the whole year! I wrote a series of blog posts for Strings Magazine about these weeks - basically about my life as a traveling violinist, and thoughts about the different concertos I played and about traveling and adjusting to acoustics of the hall and working with different conductors.
The first post was about playing the Beethoven concerto with the Boston Symphony and Andris Nelsons. Walking onstage in Boston's beautiful Symphony Hall is quite an experience, especially when the room is packed with people. Its resonant acoustics are ideal for the Beethoven. Sixteen white marble statues in the Roman style watch over the concert hall, while the name "Beethoven" is placed most prominently in gold on top of the proscenium!
You can read the full post on the Strings Magazine site here
After Boston, I traveled to New York City for three performances of the Sibelius concerto with Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic. New York City has been my home for the past 15 years, and I have played with the New York Philharmonic a number of times over the years, and just played the Britten concerto with them and Jaap in Vail in July, so this past week felt in many ways like I was coming home to friends. The full post is here
In the third blog post, I wrote about traveling to Eindhoven in the Netherlands to perform Prokofiev's second violin concerto with the BBC Philharmonic on tour and John Storgards. Later in the week I continued to London to play the Mendelssohn concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Clemens Schuldt. I write about jet lag, what it's like to perform concerts that are also live radio broadcasts, and how Mendelssohn and Prokofiev, despite the huge stylistic differences between them, arrive at a similar emotional place in their second movements.
The third blog post is here
The fourth and final Strings Magazine blog post is about my concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra, playing once again Prokofiev's second concerto. I go into more depth about my thougths about Prokofiev. His music is always telling stories in very colorful and evocative ways, but his idosyncratic way of writing makes his works quite hard to memorize. The concerts were with Klaus Mäkelä, a young Finnish conductor who stepped in as a replacement, and was totally brilliant!
Here's the link to the full post.
After a little break, my next concerts will be Brahms concerto with the Seattle Symphony and Nathalie Stutzmann. I have a long friendship with this orchestra and am always happy to return to Seattle, where I have made so many fond musical memories over the years. After that, I will go to Hamburg to play with Alan Gilbert, in my debut with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. I have heard so much about the Elbphilharmonie concert hall, and can't wait to check it out for myself with a conductor I love playing with.
I am happy that so many new halls are being built. I believe that after a "dark age" of acoustics in the post-war period, when halls often turned out quite poorly, the last few decades have actually been a golden age of beautiful- and clear-sounding concert halls being built all over the world!
Happy New Year! 2018 was filled with exciting milestones and was one of my busiest ever - I played 14 different concertos throughout the year as well as recital and chamber programs, in a total of 113 performances! Since my last update, I flew around the world a few times - in addition to visits to Minneapolis, Kansas City, Seattle, San Antonio and Miami and a return to the Hollywood Bowl, I also made my debut at the Salzburg Festival and went on a wonderful tour to New Zealand and Singapore in August. In the fall I made a lot of trips to Europe to play performances in Oslo, Brussels, Lyon, Frankfurt, Helsinki and Vienna. One of the biggest highlights of the year was my debut with the Bavarian Radio Symphony in October 2018 playing Dvorak concerto with Jakub Hrusa!
In November I made a very special return to Indianapolis playing Bartók's second concerto with Krzysztof Urbański. This was the concerto I played at the Indianapolis Violin Competition in 2006, and as I stood on that same stage again playing that same piece with the same orchestra, I had many flashbacks to my time at the competition! I used to be so nervous performing, and have over the years felt more and more at home on stage. My visit to Indianapolis made me reflect on how much has happened and how much experience I have gained since then.
In other news: my recording of David Lang's mystery sonatas, a work commissioned by Carnegie Hall that he wrote for me in 2014, is finally out and can be ordered here!
There are also some new Youtube videos of performances of the Britten concerto in Detroit in March and of the Mendelssohn concerto in Valladolid, Spain in May.
My recording of the Brahms and Ligeti violin concertos with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and Miguel Harth-Bedoya will be released on Warner Classics in April. I've dreamt for a long time of recording these two masterpieces of the 19th and 20th century together on album. They are of course very different in style and temperament, but also similar in surprising ways — for example there is a strong influence of both renaissance counterpoint and of Hungarian folk music in movements of both concertos.
This recording will feature two new cadenzas: the amazing cadenza for the Ligeti by Thomas Adès that I already wrote about in my previous news entry, and my own cadenza for the Brahms concerto, which I have added to the cadenzas section on this site.
Until the early 20th century, it was customary and even a point of pride, for violinists (from Joachim to Kreisler to Heifetz) to write their own cadenzas to the Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms concertos (those major concertos without a cadenza by the composer). Unfortunately, this tradition did not continue into our time. Writing a cadenza is a very rewarding process for the performer and provides variety and a personal viewpoint to the listener. It's important to stay close to the composer's style, since it can be jarring otherwise, and in order to achieve this it's essential to study and analyze the composer's use of form, rhythm and their harmonic language. For me, it was a humbling experience to compose using Brahms' motives and materials and gave me an even greater appreciation of his genius.
2019 is off to a fast start, with concerts in January in Moscow, Toledo (Ohio), Bournemouth, Lausanne, Raleigh (North Carolina), and Birmingham, UK!
What a whirlwind the past few months have been! On Wednesday I played my debut with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal - Tchaikovsky concerto with John Storgards conducting. I love his approach to the piece, the spontaneous, warm and flexible way in which he approaches the score - never repetitive, or merely an accompaniment. The Montréal Symphony played with a warm tone and responded to every nuance. Every time I perform the Tchaikovsky, I think to myself, what an exhilarating piece to perform!
I have enjoyed every performance in 2018, despite the weather, and some very difficult travel. It is not unusual that when weather cancellations occur, I have to book several additional "contingency" flights with other airlines, since it can be impossible to know which flight will go ahead and which will be canceled. Because of this kind of planning, I've not missed a concert or even a rehearsal since 2012! Other hiccups can occur, however. For my concerts in Lahti in February, my suitcases never arrived, and I had to borrow a tails from the orchestra for the performance. This season has also seen multiple acts of "security theater" at airports with absurd inspections of the violin case, and an occasional airline employee strike. It's when I finally get to a destination and start rehearsals that I am reminded about why I do what I do!
Earlier this month I performed the Bernstein Serenade at the Kennedy Center with the Fort Worth Symphony and Miguel Harth-Bedoya, as part of the SHIFT festival. It was ten years ago that I made my Carnegie Hall debut with Miguel and the Fort Worth Symphony, and I have been back to Fort Worth many times - it was such a joy to perform with them at Kennedy Center and the concerto's theme of love felt fitting for the occasion! It's a piece loosely - very loosely - based on Plato's Symposium, but is really a violin concerto. Even Bernstein later wished he'd just called it "concerto" as the title is actually more distracting than helpful. I especially love the fourth movement, "Agathon", and also the jazzy dances of the last movement.
Other recent highlights: in March I returned to Detroit to perform the Britten concerto with Jukka-Pekka Saraste and the Detroit Symphony. (The New Yorker Magazine music writer Alex Ross came to Detroit that week and wrote an article about our performances). Earlier in the season, I also performed the Britten with the St. Louis Symphony and David Robertson on a tour in California. I had a blast performing the Ligeti concerto again, with the Seattle, Milwaukee and Boston Symphony orchestras. In Boston I played the premiere of Thomas Adès' new cadenza for the Ligeti, a kind of frenzied recapitulation of all five movements of the concerto. It's a brilliant conclusion to the piece, and I think it's amazing how true it is to Ligeti's compositional style. The Boston Symphony released a short video clip of the ending of the last movement and the cadenza.
My Paganini album was released in January and is available for order! It is an amazing feeling to finally hold the CD in my hand. It feels like it was something I worked towards my whole life! Several music videos were released alongside the album, and are now on YouTube: Fantasia dei Gatti, an animated short based on Caprice no. 17, and music videos of Caprices nos. 1, 3, 4, 11, 16 and 21.
I'm in the middle of a busy and exciting summer season. There have already been many fun visits to festivals (Chautauqua, Vail and Aspen, a week playing at the Seattle Chamber Music Society, and now Bowdoin in Maine).The highlight for me was last week's Sibelius performance at Tanglewood with Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony! The Sibelius violin concerto has long been one of my favorite concertos; there is no other work quite like it in the violin repertoire. Half concerto and half tone-poem, the Sibelius is filled with startlingly original and memorable ideas. The energy and effortless musicality of Andris was enormously inspiring - it was as though the music flowed from the score through him to the orchestra and to the audience. It was exhilarating to perform this incredible work for over 4000 people!
Next week I will travel to the Sun Valley Music Festival in Idaho for the first time (Dvorak concerto), and then go to London for my first performance at the BBC Proms! At the Proms, I will perform "Four Iberian Miniatures" by Francisco Coll, with the Britten Sinfonia and Thomas Adès conducting. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Adès and his music and music-making (and that I play his concerto as often as I can) and this will be my first time playing with him as a conductor.
Right after, I will travel to Amsterdam for a performance of the Beethoven concerto with the Rotterdam Philharmonic in the beautiful Concertgebouw hall. I know the hall from my performances as artist-in-residence with the Netherlands Philharmonic in 2015. It has a famous staircase behind the orchestra from which the soloist and conductor descend - probably one of the most difficult paths to a stage I've seen. I'd never been so self-conscious when going down stairs! When you play there, you cannot help but think of all the amazing artists who have filled the hall with their sound in the past.
After Amsterdam, I have a few weeks off which I shall use to prepare for the start of an ambitious project for next season: the recording of the complete caprices of Paganini for Warner Classics. I've often played caprices as encores in the last years (especially nos. 5, 24, 9, 17 and 19, and occasionally no. 1). The Paganini Caprices were a major part of my musical upbringing in Italy. Paganini's works are often regarded to be Etudes or chores used to improve technique, which is understandable, considering how much hardship they cause violinists! However, they are also beautiful, witty and original compositions. In Paganini's works, the technical fireworks always serve the music, not the other way around. As he explores different extended techniques and virtuosic acrobatics, each caprice also shows off his compositional skills, which are on a higher level than many other 19th-century violinist composers. Many of the caprices are charming, funny, entertaining and thrilling, some are dramatic and passionate, and yet others serene and lyrical. Each caprice has its own quirky personality; some are my friends, but others are ferocious beasts to be tamed! A few of them are not so terribly difficult, while others provide technical challenges so absurdly extreme as to border on the impossible. I'll be recording groups of caprices over the course of the season, in order to give each of them the attention they deserve.
I won my first Grammy! It was in the category of "Best Classical Instrumental Solo" for my recording of the Dutilleux violin concerto ("l'arbre des songes") with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot. (link)
This incredibly exciting news reached me on February 15, when I was mid-journey on my way to England where I have spent the past two weeks performing first with the Bournemouth Symphony (where I am Artist-in-Residence this season), then with the London Philharmonic, and now with the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester. It has been wonderful to read all your words of congratulations and support in the many emails, texts and Facebook messages I received. I cannot imagine better collaborators than Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony, and with the help of the engineer, Dmitriy Lipay, the recording turned out so beautifully. I am also personally thrilled because I love Dutilleux and our winning this award might lead to more people discovering his beautiful and somewhat neglected concerto.
On Wednesday, I performed the Tchaikovsky concerto with the London Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko, and the recording of this performance will eventually be released on the same disc as Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole (which I played with the LPO last year), sometime in early 2017. It may seem like an unusual pairing, but it was actually upon hearing the Lalo that Tchaikovsky decided to write his own concerto!
I have played the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto since I was 12 years old. Over the years, through playing it again and again, I have found it occasionally necessary to take a step back and approach the piece as if I had never played nor heard it before. Out of the entire violin repertoire, this is the concerto where the violinistic "tradition" (all the old recordings and conventions passed down through the generations of violinists) is least helpful to me, as the concerto had historically been performed with cuts, many parts altered, and so many of Tchaikovsky's instructions (about tempo, dynamics, articulation) ignored. I find these changes extraneous, because the concerto, as it was originally written by Tchaikovsky, is so brilliantly conceived and thoughtful!
Tchaikovsky's favorite composer was Mozart, and his violin concerto (just like the "Rococo Variations"), shows Mozart's influence in many places. The main theme of the first movement is classical and elegant, in contrast with the lushly romantic and passionate second theme. It has often been speculated that Tchaikovsky had a romantic affair with Josef Kotek, for whom he wrote this concerto (although Kotek did not premiere the piece), and the music seems to reflect this sunny period in his life – to me, this piece was written by a man who is happily and passionately in love. Therefore, to me, this concerto is a joyful work, and though there are some bittersweet, aching moments (for example in the slow movement, Canzonetta), it never takes a dark or tragic turn. An exhilarating concerto both to think about and to play!
I will always remember the day in early 2007 when I performed the Tchaikovsky with the Fort Worth Symphony and Miguel Harth-Bedoya in front of large groups of high school students in South Lake, TX. (We repeated the performance three times in one day, for three groups of students!) These were not regular concertgoers and I found it wonderful how uninhibited they were, without much awareness nor concern about how to behave "appropriately" at a classical concert. At the end of the exposition of the first movement, where the first long violin solo ends and the orchestra plays the first theme, the students started clapping! When this music was written, it was customary for audiences to cheer whenever they liked something they were hearing (or to boo if they didn't). And doesn't it feel so artificial when people don't clap after the first movement of the Tchaikovsky? I found theunrestrained enthusiasm of the students very refreshing. To this day I still think back fondly to those performances whenever I play the Tchaikovsky.
Aspen, July 30 2015 -- I can't believe how long it has been since my last news update! Over the past few years, it has become harder and harder to find the time to write these notes. 2015 has been a whirlwind! It would be impossible to pick a favorite moment - I played debuts with the London Philharmonic, NHK Symphony (Tokyo), Danish National Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra, return engagements with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the orchestras in Baltimore, Houston, Karlsruhe, Saint Louis, Stuttgart, Toronto… every week has been incredibly exciting, and I was never bored for a moment. Violinists are lucky that there is so much great repertoire written for our instrument!
My newest CD, of the Mendelssohn concerto and the second Bartók concerto is finally out! I recorded it in June 2014 with my friend Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra (There is a promo film for the recording here). It is now added in the "about/discography" section, and I added some selections from it to the sound player of the website.
There are also some new videos from my time in Vail, Colorado last week: my performance of the Sibelius concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra (link); first movement of Janacek sonata with Joyce Yang (link).
The year has gotten off to a fast start. I have just returned from my first visit to Hawaii and am performing this week with the Pacific Symphony. After this I'm playing my debut with the Danish National Orchestra, with my friend Miguel Harth-Bedoya; then comes the second performance of my residency with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, and a return to the SWR Stuttgart Radio Orchestra. My father is from Stuttgart and going there always feels a bit like going home.
Work is progressing on my next recording, Mendelssohn and Bartók violin concertos, to be released later in the spring. The other recording in the pipeline is the violin concerto by Henri Dutilleux (L'arbre des songes - The Tree of Dreams), which I recorded in November with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot (with a release planned for late 2015). I've always liked Dutilleux's music. He lived through the era of dogmatic avantgardism in new music, between the 1950s and 1990s, but along with Messiaen, Dutilleux stood out by writing music that, although complex, was always expressive, beautiful and colorful. I can hear many echoes of Ravel in Dutilleux's orchestration and every moment is imaginative and interesting. Where Messiaens music is often massive in scale and celebratory, Dutilleux's is more intimate and searching. His concerto is quite rhapsodic, with many fanciful and virtuosic lines that branch out in all directions (those are the branches of the "tree of dreams"). In the most beautiful part of the piece, the violin plays a duet with the oboe d'amore, their lines weaving in and out of each other, as if in an embrace.
I wish you all a happy and musical year 2015!
Great news! I have been selected as the winner of the new Warner Music Prize! It is a prize which was awarded for the first time this year. The nominees were selected amongst soloists performing at Carnegie Hall in the 14/15 season and I am so happy and honored to be chosen.
This season has already been very exciting! I returned from Hong Kong this week after playing my debut with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and am about to travel to Chicago for my debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra! Mozart concerto no. 5, an old favorite, is the repertoire for both debut performances. It is sometimes called "the Turkish" in English-speaking parts of the world. The last movement, a gallant and civilized minuet, is interrupted by a wild, savage and exotic-sounding section.All "exotic" and Eastern-sounding music was referred to as "Turkish" by Mozart and his countrymen, though it had little to do with traditional Turkish music. A century later, if Brahms had written this he and his contemporaries might have called it a Hungarian interlude (just as inaccurately)! This rogue section sounds more like Gypsy music, and parts of it remind me of Czardas. The celli are instructed to play "al rovescio", beating the string with the wooden part of the bow to imitate whips! The piece was written less than a hundred years after the siege of Vienna of 1683, when the Turkish army almost took the city, and were beaten back with the help of Polish troops - this "Turkish" section is supposed to delight the audience by first scaring them, and then provide relief as the music returns to the sweet and 'familiar' minuet, a compositional device which is incredibly effective.
This fall has been filled with some wonderful musical experiences. I recently played the Beethoven concerto in Milwaukee with Edo de Waart, which was a particularly beautiful collaboration. Earlier in October, I greatly enjoyed playing the Mendelssohn concerto with the orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin and Sir Neville Marriner. Another musical highlight was my debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony in September, when I played the Brahms concerto with Manfred Honeck.
Looking ahead, I will be playing more unusual repertoire: first, Adès concerto with the Tonkünstlerorchester in Vienna, then the Shostakovich violin sonata in an arrangement for violin, strings and percussion (link) in Detroit, and finally, in a very exciting project with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall (with additional concerts on the west coast), the Stravinsky Divertimento and Tchaikovsky Valse-Scherzo. Stravinsky's "Divertimento" is one of Stravinsky's most brilliant works. The music is from his ballet "the Fairy's Kiss", which is based on themes from Tchaikovsky. The way Tchaikovsky's themes have been "Stravinski-fied" resembles how one might imagine Tchaikovsky would sound if performed by an inebriated orchestra in which half the players lose their places, or start playing in the wrong key! While Stravinsky occasionally pokes fun at Tchaikovsky's compositional practices, he never does it without respect. This music is a loving homage to the beauty, passion, lightness and elegance of Tchaikovsky's ballet scores. He made a violin and piano version (which is my favorite Stravinsky violin piece actually), and also an orchestral suite, and we asked Dmitry Sitkovetsky to make a new arrangement for violin and small chamber orchestra. We chose an instrumentation similar to Tchaikovsky's Valse-Scherzo, which appears on the second half of the program. In recitals, I have often performed the Divertimento and the Valse-Scherzo together and I hope that the new arrangement and this pairing will more clearly reveal the Tchaikovsky within the Stravinsky.
It has been a really busy and exciting summer! It got off to an unexpected start in early July, when I filled in on less than two days' notice at the Blossom Festival to play the Sibelius concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra and Hans Graf. Since I spent so much time preparing for my Sibelius recording last year, and afterwards on the long process of listening to the recording session takes and the mixes, it is a piece that I can now play on very short notice. It was a joy to play with the Cleveland Orchestra again and amazing to experience the orchestral tutti passages in the first movement (probably my favorite parts) while standing on stage, enveloped by their glorious sound.
After my first performance of the Dutilleux concerto in Chautauqua, I went to Aspen for 10 days to reprise the "Tango Song and Dance" program (originally premiered at the Kennedy Center in April) with Joyce Yang and Pablo Villegas, as well as for another performance of the Sibelius. Playing the fourth Mozart concerto at Tanglewood on August 3rd was another highlight of the summer. It was originally supposed to have been conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, who sadly passed away in June. He had been a generous and inspiring mentor to me for the past few years and I had been really looking forward to several performances together in the future. Fortunately Juanjo Mena (himself once a protégé of Maestro Frühbeck) was available to step in.
Next I went to play at the Britt Festival in Oregon, and then to Mexico City. The wonderful thing about summer festivals is that even though it's in some ways more difficult to play outdoors rather than in a regular concert hall, the large crowds, their good mood and the relaxed setting inevitably transfers back to the performers. In Mexico City I performed Bartók's Second Concerto with the Orquesta Sinfónica Minería and Carlos Miguel Prieto. Already five years ago, when we first played together, Carlos and I were talking of collaborating on this concerto, a favorite for both of us. This piece, too, was very fresh in my head since I recently recorded it in June. When performing the Bartók in the past, I have often felt that there is not enough rehearsal time: with the difficulty of the orchestral parts, the complexity of the ensemble, and so many tempo changes, it needs substantially more preparation time than other 20th-century works like the Shostakovich or Prokofiev concertos. And if Bartók is not played really well—with great expression, beautiful color, and in tune—it sounds very cacophonic! I think the reason why many concertgoers think they don't like Bartók is because they have heard his works played badly. Once you know Bartók's style well, you know his vocabulary of gestures and colors and harmonies, and what they mean emotionally; and with this mental reference you will know whether it is a good piece, regardless of how it is being played, just the way you would when hearing Beethoven or Brahms. But people who are less familiar with Bartók will not 'get it' unless they are led and drawn in by the performers, who must bring out all those details. I was really happy that we had a lot of time to get to the bottom of it in rehearsal, with the result that the performance was musically extremely satisfying.
I've just returned from Scotland, where I played Thomas Adès' concerto and Haydn's C Major concerto with Peter Oundjian and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow. I had a great time and the pairing of the two pieces worked very well; their combined duration is about 35 minutes, and early music is a major influence for Adès. I think the pairing enhanced the effect of both pieces by revealing Ades' use of baroque gestures and phrasing, especially in the slow movement, which is a sort of passacaglia. (It was completely different from the pairing of Adès and Sibelius on my CD, which in contrast enhanced the dramatic, heroic, and monumental side of both works.) To close the program I played a slow Bach movement (the unbelievably beautiful Andante movement from the third solo sonata) that brought us back to the key and style of the Haydn.
I am now preparing for my next CD recording in June, with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and Miguel Harth-Bedoya. I will record two of my all-time favorite pieces: the Mendelssohn concerto and Bartók's second concerto! In this case, I am drawn to the combination just for how totally different the two works are. I also know that Bartók's style is not familiar to many people; hopefully, I can convert new listeners to Bartók who may get the CD because of the Mendelssohn. Once you are hooked on Bartók, you will never tire of his music. The great challenge of his second violin concerto is its form: the first movement is straightforward sonata form, the second movement is a theme with variations, and the finale is a variation of the first. It's astonishing how he manages to make the material of the first movement totally new in the last. But since this is not obvious to the new listener, it's the job of the performer to play the piece in a way that hangs together, with a sustained dramatic arc that doesn't get sidetracked. There is a lot of pain and sadness in this work, which was written during 1937-38 as fascism was spreading. One can sense the premonition and fear of what was to come, but there are also precious moments of beauty(not least the opening of the concerto with its beautiful harp chords). Like much of his writing it is unmistakably Hungarian, coming out of the rich Hungarian folk music tradition.
At the end of April, I premiered a new solo violin work by David Lang, called mystery sonatas. It is a large work in seven movements, inspired by the Rosary Sonatas of the Baroque virtuoso Heinrich Biber. This is the first time I've had a piece written for me and it was exciting to work with David—who was very patient and accommodating!--as I was learning it. David's music is "minimalist" in the sense that he works with techniques of repetitive variation over extended periods of time. But what drew me to his music is its emotional depth. David's music often looks inward, and despite the apparent peacefulness, there is a lot of turmoil under the surface. This becomes more and more apparent the longer one listens. The first and the last movements are very slow and almost meditative. One of the inner ones is a crazy fast fiddling pattern that gradually finds a groove, but then becomes stuck on two notes with no way out. One sounds a bit like a Baroque invention, and yet another one is composed of two long, painful and increasingly poignant descending sequences. David left most of the articulations and detailed dynamics up to me, and in some of the more meditative movements, even the pacing - he just described what he wanted to be expressed, likening the music to thoughts that are forming as I play. For the premiere at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, I read the music off an iPad (doing the page-turns with pedals), with the hall entirely dark at the beginning - the only light being the backlighting of the iPad on my face. It was a powerful effect - and I must say that, once I got the hang of the foot pedals for page turning, in many ways I preferred it to using a traditional stand! (You can read the New York TImes review of the premiere here)
My new recording of the violin concertos by Thomas Adès and Jean Sibelius was released a few weeks ago, and has already gotten some great reviews in the New York Times, Gramophone Magazine, BBC Music Magazine and on NPR! (I added it to the site under about>discography)
A few weeks ago I went to play in Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte. It's refreshing to go to a country like Brazil where classical music is so much on the up-swing, with world-class orchestras that get even better every time I visit, playing for enthusiastic and inquisitive audiences of all ages.
In Sao Paulo I played Mozart concerto no. 4 with Marin Alsop - the rest of the program consisted of works by Prokofiev (including almost never done Scythian Suite) and by the Brazilian composer César Guerra-Peixe. In Belo Horizonte I played Bartók's second concerto with Fabio Mechetti, and the rest of the program were works by Beethoven, Villa-Lobos and Enescu. Perhaps because there is not a pre-conceived notion (built over many decades) of what programs are supposed to be -- the traditional pattern is of course overture-concerto-symphony, and everything except for the overture is very old music -- the programming there is varied and imaginative: new and old music, obscure and well-known all mixed together, and audiences come with an open mind.
Right afterward I flew to Europe to play my first recital in the Kleine Zaal at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam with Charles Owen. What a beautiful hall in a beautiful city! We both enjoyed every second of it.
Last week I played Mendelssohn with Juanjo Mena and the Cincinnati Symphony - leading up to the performances, I did a "residency" with the CSO, going to various schools and performing outreach events. I enjoyed getting to know Cincinnati better this time (being there almost two weeks rather than just flying in for the first rehearsal). I even played one performance at a bar (Northside Tavern) with my friend Pablo Villegas. Tango is meant to be played in this setting! It was the first time that I played Piazzolla's "Histoire du Tango" in a bar rather than in a hall, and the atmosphere was electric.
Next Monday (April 21) I have a project at the Kennedy Center that also features Pablo, as well as Joyce Yang. It's called "Tango, Song and Dance" - named after a work for violin and piano by André Previn. The three movements of the Previn work form the separated pillars of a recital program, with various duos and solo works in-between. It is a "multimedia recital": we're working with a director, Edward Berkeley, and developed a narrative with him, a kind of story told subliminally through the way the different pieces follow each other. In Ed's words, "The first step is to study the emotional connections between and among the instrumental lines in each work. Where do the instruments argue? Where do they agree? Where do they flirt? Where seduce? Where do they celebrate, where despair?" It all starts with Previn's Tango. Ed elaborates: "The violin and piano in Previn's Tango seem to be having an emotional problem connecting with each other. There is a struggle. This is the core of the evening, the starting point that cries for resolution." It is then that Pablo appears playing Rodrigo's Invocation and Dance for solo guitar, drawing me into his own mysterious world. I join him in five Falla songs, after which the piano explodes jealously in Ginastera's Danzas Argentinas. Ed feels that "private thoughts are explored in the solo works until a synthesis is found among the violin, piano and guitar". After Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango and Ysaÿe's sonata no. 6, we finally all play together in Villa-Lobos's gorgeous Bachianas brasileiras No. 5.
To reinforce the non-verbal narrative, Ed asked lighting designer Kate Ashton to create lighting that would further communicate the story. Ed asked that "spaces become smaller and larger to connect and separate the musicians, and that color and image change to imply the passage of time and further explore the emotional voice of each instrument." The lighting is atmospheric, reinforcing the character and emotional message of each work. We want the audience to reflect upon where the pieces take them, and to make their own connections. Hopefully this program will be as much fun for them as it is for us!
It has been a long time since my last update! The fall of 2013 was packed with wonderful experiences, so packed that I could not even find the time to write about them. Unforgettable highlights were the Brahms double with Alban Gerhardt, Christoph von Dohnányi and the Boston Symphony; and a Lalo with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and the Philadelphia Orchestra. I went on an extremely fun China tour with the San Diego Symphony, made new friends in Porto, Bournemouth and Portland, OR and reunited with old friends in Milwaukee, Vancouver and Madison.
2014 has already gotten off to a fast-paced start. Three weeks ago I was in Dallas packing my bag after a recital when the phone rang: the Los Angeles Philharmonic needed a violinist to fill a cancellation by Christian Tetzlaff! Edo de Waart was to be the conductor; rehearsals would start in three days.
When getting a call like this, I feel a rush of excitement quickly followed by many questions: will the travel be a problem? What about the repertoire - is there enough time for me to prepare? I quickly sent a list of works I could get ready in this short amount of time. We settled on the Beethoven Concerto. (Other possibilities that were discussed were Sibelius, Dvorak, Bartók no. 2 and Stravinsky). I had already played several times with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the summer at the Hollywood Bowl, but never in on a subscription series, and I couldn't think of any piece I'd rather make my Disney Hall debut with!
Most orchestras and presenters plan their concert schedules years in advance. After the initial excitement of getting an invitation there's a very long wait until the concert finally happens. I've always hated this waiting for things and in contrast, cancellations are refreshingly fast. The call comes; I accept; and a few days later it's already over and I wonder whether it was all just a dream!
I enjoyed the concerts immensely and got a great review! Disney Hall has the perfect acoustic for the Beethoven concerto - even though it's a large hall, the softest sounds float all the way to the back. Every time I play the slow movement of the Beethoven, I marvel at how perfect, how simple, intimate and human it is. Perhaps it gives us--just for a moment--an insight into some deep fundamental truth of our existence, a glimpse of what lies beyond. My feeling about Beethoven's greatest works is that the better you know and understand them, the harder it is to imagine a person being able to write something so extraordinary.
Anyway, after the last performance, I flew to Hong Kong for a chamber festival. There were wonderful musicians there, some of which I already know well (Joyce Yang, Cho-Liang Lin); others whom I played with for the first time (Vadim Repin, Gary Hoffman). While we did rehearse a lot, we must have spent half the time eating! And as usual at these kinds of festivals, there was much laughter and jokes to counter all the serious music-making.
The pre-order page for my new CD (of the Sibelius and Thomas Adès concertos with Hannu Lintu and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic) is available for pre-ordering now on iTunes and Amazon!
This summer has been an unusually busy one, but I am just about to start a 2-week break! Last week I played a performance of Stravinsky's violin concerto, the first time I've played it since 8 years ago, when I was still a student at Juilliard and performed it with the Juilliard Orchestra. It is interesting to return to a piece after putting it down for such a long time - as I started playing it again, I was at first mostly shaking my head at all the things I didn't know in 2005! I also rediscovered why I love this piece. It is so fresh, beautiful, and very funny - the first movement makes me think of a circus! The third movement (Aria II) is my favorite one - it has the violin playing a strange, exotic, chant-like melody over a baroque bass-line. Many parts of this piece sound like a concerto grosso, in the sense that the solo violin is often playing duos and trios: with the Bassoon, the concertmaster, the two flutes. The violin part is very hard and quite virtuosic in parts, although to the listener it does not sound quite as hard as it actually is (infuriatingly, Stravinsky wrote that "the technical demands are relatively tame", which ranks among the composer's more ridiculous statements).
In his neo-classical works, Stravinsky writes music that is almost baroque sounding, except that it is full of "mistakes": notes that are obnoxiously off-key, rythms that don't add up; there is a general state of chaos and mischief! At times sounds as though different sections of the orchestra instruments are lost and are desperately trying to find each other, only making matters worse. I think it's quite important to bring this comedic aspect of the music across.
In June, I recorded a new CD, to be released in the spring of 2014: Sibelius and Thomas Adès violin concertos, with Hannu Lintu conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. It'll be only the second recording to be released of the Adès, which has quickly become one of my favorite pieces. I think Hannu was just the perfect conductor to record these two works with: his approach to Sibelius was fresh and free of "baggage": it is a piece that can sometimes sound plodding and heavy, as though it was bearing the weight of the thousands of recordings that have been made of it before - instead he brought a wonderful spontaneity to it. It was Hannu who first introduced me to the Ades concerto when we first collaborated in 2009 - how fitting to recording it with him.
My performances in Vail (Lalo Symphonie Espagnole with the New York Philharmonic and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos) and at the Hollywood Bowl (Tchaikovsky concerto with the LA Philharmonic and also with Frühbeck de Burgos) were big highlights for me this summer. What an experience to play the Tchaikovsky at the Hollywood Bowl, in front of over 9000 people! The big tutti in the first movement after the exposition (after I've just played about 10 minutes and the orchestra plays the theme triumphantly) is one of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever had on stage. Usually, I sing along with the orchestra there (since nobody can possibly hear me over the sound of the full orchestra tutti, not even the conductor!), but I had to restrain myself at the Bowl, since the amplification system there might have broadcasted my humming to the whole crowd. As I found out later, a man in the audience proposed to his girlfriend during my performance!
I am about to head to Salt Lake City to perform the Dvorak concerto with the Utah Symphony, and will play the piece again in two weeks with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D.C. It's often said that Brahms' violin concerto served as the main inspiration for the Dvorak--yet recently, I was struck by how much the Dvorak is also influenced by Max Bruch's concerto. The Bruch was premiered about 10 years earlier, in 1866, and it quickly became one of the most popular works for violin. It sets a clear precedent for many techniques employed by Dvorak in his own violin concerto, especially in the first movement: for example, shortening of the first movement, cutting out the cadenza and recapitulation and instead transitioning directly into an expansive slow movement; not to mention the opening ad libitum lines for the violin. I love the slow movement, which makes me think of an idyllic Czech countryside, and features some incredibly beautiful writing for the horns. The last movement is a lot of fun: it's a kind of furiant dance, with a dumka in the middle. Although Dvorak wrote his concerto for Joseph Joachim, he never actually played the piece. This might have been the starting point for the shameful neglect that this work has experienced over the past century. With a few notable exceptions like Nathan Milstein, many major violinists in the early 20th century did not have the Dvorak in their repertoire. Luckily it has now found its place in the canon as one of the great romantic violin concertos.
Two weeks ago I played Thomas Adès' amazing violin concerto in Rio de Janeiro. This piece is less than 10 years old--it was premiered in 2005--and the more I play it, the more convinced I am that it is the most important addition to the violin repertoire since the Ligeti concerto in 1992. When I first heard it a few years ago, the Adès concerto left a deep impression on me and I quickly decided that I had to learn and perform it. It's about 20 minutes long and is cast in three contrasting movements. There is not one bar too many in this piece! The first movement, "Rings", is very fast and colorful, full of circular, irregular pulsating patterns. The deeply moving and passionate second movement, "Paths", is driven by passacaglia-like sequences that keep pushing against each other. "Rounds", the final movement, is lighter in spirit, with a dancelike and almost tribal-sounding main theme. It's very difficult, but like the Ligeti, I find that it is worth every minute I put into it.
My new CD is now out! It's called Histoire du Tango and you can find it on Amazon and iTunes. It's an exploration of music for violin and guitar that starts off with Ástor Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango, a four-movement work that traces the development of the tango from the brothels of Buenos Aires around 1900, to the cafés of the 1930s and nightclubs of the 1960s, to the stylized art form played in concert halls today. Next are transcriptions of the Canciones Populares Españolas by Manuel de Falla and two works by Nicolò Paganini: the Sonata Concertata and the fiendishly difficult Moses Fantasy, a work played entirely on the G string (the violin's lowest string). (Legend has it that Paganini would often play this work at the end of concerts once his other three strings had broken!) Pablo de Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) finishes the program.
I recorded this album with the brilliant guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas, whom I first met in 2009. I immediately loved the sound of our two instruments together, and was struck by how rarely violin and guitar are heard together on stage and recording, even though the combination is found in so many popular music settings (like tango and gypsy bands).
Click here to view a short video clip on YouTube, where we talk about the album and play one of the movements of the Piazzolla.
I just finished a series of performances of the Brahms concerto - in Denver, Memphis, Buffalo and Tampere (Finland). It's amazing how different and new this piece feels every time as I play it with different people. Next up I'm playing Paganini's first violin concerto with Saint Louis Symphony and Yan Pascal Tortelier. Paganini's music is dismissed by many as mainly technical, but the first thing I think when I think of this piece is opera: it's written in the lyrical, highly expressive style of the bel canto tradition…with some virtuosic episodes thrown in. It's music that should melt your heart before it dazzles you. One of my first teachers, the Italian violinist Uto Ughi (with whom I studied in Siena from age 8 to 11) understood this, and his approach to this concerto has always been a great inspiration to me. I love Paganini's sense of humor too, and it's essential to bring that out, despite how hard the piece is technically. A few years ago, I wrote a cadenza for it (link), in which I try to emphasize the fun side of the piece.
My new, redesigned website is finished! It was designed (like the previous one) by the brilliant Balázs Böröcz from Pilvax Studio!
I just returned from Toronto, where I played Mozart's fourth concerto, coupled with the virtuosic Rondo from the "Haffner"-Serenade, with Peter Oundjian conducting. Every collaboration with him is like chamber music, and I feel like he knows what I'm going to do before even I know it!
This week I'm playing Mozart's 5th concerto in my Dallas Symphony debut with Jaap van Zweden.
Is it possible to have a favorite Mozart violin concerto? Luckily, I don't have to pick a favorite, and get to play both two weeks in a row!
Overall, the 5th concerto is flashier and more extroverted, while the 4th concerto is more intimate and elegant. When it comes to the slow movements, I feel that the concertos 3, 4 and 5 are tied, and one is more beautiful than the other. The beauty of the Andante of the 4th concerto lies in its simplicity - the music is so pure, and communicates something that is impossible to put into words. Already as a child, I loved playing this movement.
The slow movement of the 5th is also very beautiful but it is more the kind of beauty one finds in Beethoven - the beauty of something carefully constructed, refined to perfection. In Beethovenian manner, Mozart had discarded his original slow movement (which is now known as the Adagio in E Major) and replaced it with this new Adagio. I love how the meter of the first theme seems to shift, keeping the listener guessing where the bar lines are, and there is a gently rocking feeling to much of this movement.
Mozart liked to insert folk tunes in the Rondo movements of his concertos. In the case of the 4th, one of the interludes is a rustic Gavotte with a musette (a bagpipe imitation), which remains very funny even today. The last movement of the fifth concerto contains a "Turkish" episode - for a moment, it sounds as if we're in the middle of the abduction from the seraglio! Of course, it's Turkish folk music as heard through the ears of an Austrian 18th century composer, and quite different from how somebody like Bartók would have written it down!
Writing Spanish music was very fashionable in France at the time the work was written. Bizet's opera Carmen premiered the same year, in 1875! Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole is very emotional and hot-blooded, full of Spanish themes and rythms, and each of the five movements is like a different vignette of the idealized version of Spain that captured the imagination of the French around that time. I find that I love it more the more I play it, which is always the sign of a great piece. The violin writing is flashy in all five movements, with a lot of very fast notes which is not surprising, since it was written for the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, who presumably enjoyed showing off his technique with it.
Rehearsals start tomorrow - I can't wait!


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I updated this blog post in July 2019 to include more resources for you!
In this blog post I share how to connect to your spirit guides by following 10 steps.
I believe we all have spirit guides, and when you cultivate a relationship with your spirit guides you will receive clear, wise guidance to help you in every area of your life.
These steps work together to help you establish a relationship with your spirit guides!
My experience with spirit guides
Since I was very young, I've felt a presence of spiritual guidance within me, around me and connected to me.
In my book Spirit Junkie I shared the story of how I first started meditating when I was a teenager. I would sit and silently repeat a mantra. During this practice I started to feel a presence around me. I started to feel my extremities tingle. My hands and arms would go pleasantly numb, and I felt an undeniable presence of love, wisdom, peace and support around me.
Even in the darkest hours of my life, I could turn to that connection of spiritual guidance for comfort. When I started asking for help again, the guidance showed up fast. Spiritual intervention is the reason I bought A Course in Miracles. The book literally dragged me to the counter at the bookstore!
Eventually I began to call on that guidance every day as a regular practice. This presence has become a companion and a guidance system that has led me, supported me, and given me clarity and direction when I couldn't find it on my own.
We all have spirit guides
We all have our own spirit guides. We have guides that are ancestors and deceased family members. Some entities may have names. In some cases it may be a group of guides that all have the same name.
Maybe you've had experiences like these in your life. If you have, the 10 steps I share below will help you to have even more of them. You'll deepen your connection to your spirit guides and learn how to call on them anytime.
If you haven't had experiences like these, I welcome you to keep an open mind. If you are willing to connect with your spirit guides, these 10 simple and beautiful steps will help you.
Maybe this sounds a little trippy to you. If so, let me reassure you. Your guides are loving and wise. They are here to support you. Connecting with them is a comforting and joyful experience.
Tweet: Our spirit guides are here to give us love and light. The simple act of asking for help opens us up to receiving divine guidance. @gabbybernstein #spiritjunkie
These guides are only here to give you love and light. There are plenty of entities in this sphere, but the guides that we call on, our spirit guides, are only here for love and light. In this blog post you'll learn how to call in only the spirits of the highest truth and compassion and love.
How we experience our spirit guides
Once you begin inviting in these spirit guides, there are different ways you might experience their presence.
Inner knowing
You can experience them as an inner knowing, a voice within. You may be able to audibly hear the voice of your spirit guide, or you might even see them! I haven't had this experience, but many people have and it's amazing.
Sparks of light
Sparks of light are another indicator of a spirit guide's presence. Sometimes when I know my guides are with me, I see little sparks of light. It's very cool. It's such a groovy thing to be able to see that light knowing that there's a presence with me at that moment!
Books falling off the shelf
When books fall off the shelf, your spirit guides are the ones who are kicking them off the shelf for you! I can't tell you how many people have written to me or spoken to me at an event and said they discovered my book because it literally fell off the shelf in front of them. You can experience this kind of guidance! It is available to you.
Free-writing after meditation
Another way you can experience the presence of a spirit guide is through writing. You can call on your spirit guides through meditation, and following your meditation you can free-write and allow the voice of your guides to work through you.
Connecting to your spirit guides is about learning to rely on the voice of love. The reason these guides are here is to constantly bridge your thoughts from fear back to faith, forgiveness, love and light. They present you with creative solutions and beautiful opportunities.
10 steps to connect to your spirit guides
If you are ready to invite in that voice of love, follow these 10 steps to connect to your spirit guides.
Step 1: Get into the habit of asking
The first step to connecting with your spirit guides is to get into the habit of asking. We often forget that we have guidance within us and around us. We can remember it when we're reading a book like The Universe Has Your Back, or when we're in a yoga class, or we're doing a Kundalini meditation. In those spiritual situations, we can remember that there's a guidance beyond us.
But in the busyness of day-to-day life, it's really easy to forget this connection. When we forget about it, we start to rely on our strength. That's when fear starts to set in.
In order to change this, we have to change our habits. It's important that you start getting into the habit of asking your guides for help. The more you ask, the more you receive — period.
Think about all the things that you need help with. Maybe you need help conceiving, or making more money, or healing a relationship that's struggling.
Make a list of what you need your spirit guides' help with
Make a list of the five to 10 biggest things you need help with. You can do this now, or you can come back to this exercise after aligning with your inner wisdom through prayer or meditation. Listen to that inner wisdom and let the thoughts come through.
Once you have made this list, offer up everything you need help with and invite in the guides of the highest truth and compassion to reveal solutions. Say, "Thank you, guides of the highest truth and compassion, for revealing the solutions to these problems." Then go through your list.
Some examples…
- "Thank you, guides of the highest truth and compassion, for offering solutions to my issue with my health."
- "Thank you, guides of the highest truth and compassion, for revealing the solutions to the problems I'm having in my marriage."
- "Thank, you guides of the highest truth and compassion, for revealing the solutions to my struggle with finding a career I love."
Just go one by one asking the guides to help you. If you want to get really laser focused, you can choose just one and offer it up daily for a while.
Only call in the guides of the highest truth and compassion
Remember always to call in the guides of the highest truth and compassion. You don't want to invite the funky guides to the party! Be very specific and clear about what kind of guidance you're calling in so you don't get any riff-raff coming through.
As with the human world, there are lots of different characters, and we don't always want to invite every character over for dinner. The same goes for spiritual relationships. We want to open up our consciousness, space and energy only to the guides of the highest truth and compassion.
Don't worry about this too much. You call the shots, so do not fear those other beings. They can't come in without your permission. Just make sure to call in only the guides of the highest truth and compassion.
You can call on your guides anytime
You don't have to wait for a problem to crop up in order to call on your spirit guides. Before I get on stage, every time I give a talk, the first thing I say backstage to myself is, "Thank you, guides of the highest truth and compassion, for speaking through me." Whenever I do that, I know that the words that I need will come through me. The simple act of asking is all that is required for the guidance to show up.
Step 2: Listen
The second step in connecting to your spirit guides is to listen. The way to do this is through meditation. When you meditate, you quiet your mind so that you can hear the wisdom of the guidance that's within you and around you.
We have to slow down our vibration to become aligned with the presence of these guides. When we attune our energy to the frequency of love and peace, we can more easily connect to the vibrational messaging of our spirit guides.
Align your energy through prayer and meditation
You can say a prayer such as, "Thank you, guides of the highest truth and compassion. Thank you for showing me what I need to know. Thank you for leading me in the right direction. Thank you for whatever it is that I need."
Then you can sit in meditation for five, 10 or 20 minutes. This can be a very simple meditation. You can simply pay attention to your breath, becoming mindful of the sounds and sensations around you. Or you can repeat a mantra silently, which is one of my favorite ways to meditate. I also have a spirit guides meditation to help you connect.
Step 3: Write with your spirit guides
Once you've meditated, your next step is to write with your spirit guides. Open your journal or just grab a few sheets of paper. At the top, write an invitation to them, such as:
- "Thank you, guides of the highest truth and compassion, for revealing to me the solutions to these issues."
- "Thank you, guides of the highest truth and compassion, for revealing to me whatever you want me to know."
- "Dear guides of the highest truth and compassion, I welcome you to write through me now."
Then simply let your pen flow.
Just riff onto the page. Let whatever needs to come through come through. Ideas, stories, topics, inspired visions, things that you may not have thought of on your own, will begin to come onto the page. You can also try my spirit guides meditation and free-writing exercise.
Your guides may speak directly to you
You may find in this writing experience that your guides begin speaking to you directly. Instead of writing in the first person you may begin writing in the second person. When I am channeling my guides they often say, "Dear sister…"
In some cases, your handwriting might even change. You might feel a presence of energy moving through you. You might feel a heat in your body. And that means that there's a presence that's working through you to give you some kind of direction.
Step 4: Ask for a sign
Your guides can play fun games with you! They like to show you that they're present. So get playful with them and ask them for a sign. If you've read The Universe Has Your Back, you know my sign is an owl. Sometimes I ask for lilies. Sometimes I ask for numbers in sequence.
Recently I've been healing some physical things, and for a while I kept getting numbers in sequence. It was just the guides saying, "We've got you. We're with you."
Have you never asked for a sign before? Or have you asked but not known whether you received it? Read this post to learn how to ask for a sign and know when you've received clear guidance.
You'll be blown away when you start to ask your guides to show you signs! It will rock your world.
Step 5: Pay attention to the guidance you receive
It's one thing to ask for guidance. It's another thing to witness it, to really take it in and relish in the presence that's supporting you.
When you pay attention to the guidance you receive, you're letting yourself be in the awe and wonder of all the love that is around you. It's a big deal. This beautiful feeling is available when you truly let yourself be the witness of this amazing support that is always with you.
The practice of paying attention to guidance isn't about demanding. You don't go around all day asking, "Where's my guidance? Where's my guidance?" Instead, you simply allow yourself to be open to the wonder of that guidance.
Your guidance may show up in cool and unexpected ways, even in ways I haven't mentioned here. Your guidance can show up as a song on the radio, or maybe a spark of light, or somebody saying to you exactly what you needed to hear. Our guides work through other people. They work through doctors, friends, children and even strangers.
Step 6: Stay in an energy of gratitude
As I mentioned in step 5, you want to thank your guides. Rather than being in a place of neediness, you want to be in a place of gratitude. Shift the way you talk to your guides. If you find yourself thinking things like, "Guides, why haven't you given me this yet?" or "Guides, I don't believe in you. Why haven't you shown up for me faster?" — you show your distrust of them. You're telling them that you're not really open to their guidance and that you want to be in control.
Your gratitude keeps your relationship strong
Instead, you want to be thanking them, appreciating them and feeling deep love and gratitude for them. When you see your sign, say a silent thank-you to your guides. When you receive any form of guidance, thank them. Just say silently, "Thank, you guides, for showing me this solution." Or, "Thank you, guides, for this sign." When you are given a spiritual assignment, thank them for that as well.
Your gratitude keeps the relationship so strong and keeps those guides present with you all the time, because they know they are welcome.
When you open your heart to offer your guides gratitude and appreciation, they boomerang that energy right back to you. It's hard to describe what it feels like to be in this place of constant love and gratitude with your guides. It's a tremendous and beautiful feeling. And it is available to you.
Step 7: Release the outcome and trust in a plan better than your own
Your guides have a plan better than you do. Your guides want to bring you to the right relationship, the right career, the doctor you need, the experience that will help you.
We get in the way of that guidance. I have often avoided that guidance by trying to control situations. I obsess over how things should go and try to manipulate outcomes to get what I think is best. When we do this kind of thing, we push away our guides.
But when we let go of our plans and trust in a plan that's much greater than ours, we start to truly feel like we're being led. When we surrender, we can feel our guides leading us to the next right action.
This is what I refer to as taking spiritually aligned action. Releasing the outcome is mandatory to truly be in co-creation with your spirit guides.
Step 8: Be more childlike
If you have young kids in your life, you may be aware that many children can still see their guides. They may even speak about them. Usually around the age of 7 the veil starts to close and we shut down to this guidance system.
To lift that veil and reconnect with your guides, be more childlike! Do things that bring you joy. Jump on a trampoline. Go for a run. Paint. Swim. Cook. Whenever I'm cooking, I feel the presence of my guides around me.
Do the things that bring you joy, and that guidance will just show up fast. You'll feel it. Remember, joy is the most powerful vibration we can embody!
Step 9: Ask your spirit guides for their names if you feel called to do so
You don't have to do this step. But if you feel called to ask your guide's name (or multiple guides' names), ask them to reveal their names to you. The first name that comes to mind will be the name of your guide. Whatever name comes through is the name of your guide. It may sound like a strange name, but that's their name. Trust what you hear. The first name you hear is right.
One of my guides is a guide called Lily, and she came to me many years ago. I just knew her name was Lily. After several years of knowing Lily, I had a medium give me a reading. At the end of the reading, she said, "Lily wants me to tell you thank you, because she loves working with you." I hadn't told the medium about Lily or written about this guide. The medium just knew she was there.
Step 10: Trust in your own psychic ability
Believe in yourself. Believe in your capacity to call on this presence. Believe in your capacity to connect to these guides and to feel that support. Believe that you have an ever-present energy of love that is always within you and around you supporting you and guiding you.
The more that you trust in your own psychic ability, the more you'll be able to hear and the more you'll be able to be led by this presence.
Allowing the presence of these guides to come into your life is a great gift. Not only will they support you, but they will also support you in supporting others. They'll help support you in being a light in the world.
We need this presence of light to support us right now. We need this presence to support us through the chaos of these times, through the dramas, through the terror, through the violence. We need this presence to bring us back to love.
Grounding yourself after connecting with your spirit guides
When you tune into the spirit realm you may feel your energy shift. It's important to take time to ground yourself after connecting with your spirit guides. You want to always remember that you are having a human experience and you're here on Earth in a body. To ground yourself back into your body you can do a few simple things:
- Stomp your feet to ground yourself into the earth.
- Sit on a rock to feel connected to the earth.
- Take time to sit in stillness and drink a cup of tea or eat a snack. Do something that is consciously caring for yourself.
- You can also zip up your energy. Imagine there's a zipper at the bottom of your feet and zip yourself up all the way over your head and back down to your ankles.
Follow any one of these practices to get grounded after connecting to your guides.
Connect with your spirit guides regularly
The more you talk to your spirit guides, the more you'll rely on this ever-present guidance system. As you ask for and surrender to divine guidance, miracles will occur more and more often.
Your spirit guides want to connect with you. Follow these 10 simple steps to open up the conversation.
Take this practice further by preordering my new book, Super Attractor!
In Super Attractor, I lay out the essential methods for manifesting a life beyond your wildest dreams.
This book is a journey of remembering where your true power lies. You'll learn how to co-create the life you want. You'll accept that life can flow, that attracting is fun, and that you don't have to work so hard to get what you want. Most importantly, you'll feel good. And when you feel good, you give off a presence of joy that elevates everyone around you.
In Super Attractor I push the metaphysical envelope and talk about spirit guides, angels and the spiritual realm in a bigger and bolder way than I've ever done before.
Super Attractor comes out in September 2019. You can preorder it now and get a FREE ticket to my Manifesting Jumpstart Workshop on August 11th!
You can join this 2-hour workshop from anywhere via Livestream. I'll help you get ready for the powerful methods in the book and give you practices you can start using right away.

subset: commoncrawl


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Missouri cadets pitch in to repair veterans' graves
MEXICO, MO. -- Cadets Kane Anderson and Tyler Vaughan wander through the toppled and broken tombstones at Elmwood Cemetery, hunting for veterans' graves.
They find markers indicating veterans of the Civil War, World War I and World War II and brush away moss as they try to read faded inscriptions. Many stones are damaged and dirty. Some lean precariously, others are in pieces.
One day soon Anderson, 16, a Missouri Military Academy sophomore from Bismarck, N.D., and Vaughan, 18, a junior from Rockford, Ill., hope they'll be cleaning and repairing the markers.
"They deserve better treatment than this," Anderson says as he surveys the sad landscape.
SOUTHERN CEMETERIES:Where black history dies
WE'VE GOT THIS:Peoria cuts gun violence
UNEMPLOYMENT:Iowa county helps itself
Eighteen cadets from the private school plan to identify and fix 1,000 veterans' graves in the massive cemetery, where clay deposits in the soil have caused most tombstones to shift.
Because grave sites in the city-run cemetery are owned by the occupants' heirs, cadets and their community service advisers must first try to track down family members to seek permission. It's not easy to locate descendants of men who died in the 1800s, so cadets are embarking on genealogical detective work with help from local Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion posts and a funeral home.
"it would be good to do something good for people who did so much for our country," Vaughan says.
The young men have been investigating the appropriate way to clean aged stones without further damaging them. Ten other cadets plan to rescue neglected graves at Rock Hill Cemetery, a small plot on a gravel road seven miles out of town where confederate and Union Civil War veterans are buried.
The suggestion that cadets make the cemeteries a community service project came in a phone call to Missouri Military Academy math teacher Steve Wolf. He says the cadets' mandatory community service is good for them and for the community and creates a link for the young men, who are in grades six through 12, to history.
"They think about the time and the service the veterans gave," Wolf says. "We're paying it back a little bit."
The Academy, which has 239 students, is not affiliated with any branch of the military and only a small percentage of graduates pursue military careers, President Tony McGeorge says.
The cemetery project, he says, helps them "have a strong connection to the community. They need to give back."
Chuck Rentschler, executor of the estate of his late friend Marvin McCowan, was among the first people to give cadets permission to tend the family's graves. McCowan served in the Air Force from 1942-45.
Rentschler says he hopes other towns will "see what a great idea this is and decide to do it in their communities."
Wolf and Lt. Col. Tim Scherrer, who runs the Academy's community service program, need help spreading news of the project so they can get permission to take care of more graves. They've spoken at Rotary, Kiwanis and other service club meetings.
Family members will be asked to pay for repairs, Wolf says, but if they can't afford to do so, he will seek donations to cover the costs.
Scherrer says the lessons of the project will endure as cadets graduate and leave here.
"They need to understand that they have responsibilities to their community," he says. Future cadets likely will have the same opportunity, he adds: "I don't think we'll ever finish."


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Deep soil testing tracks nutrient movement
Going far below the surface for soil testing has been a trademark in eastern Manitoba for more than 10 years. Samples for nitrogen content are routinely collected at 1-ft. intervals to depths of 8-10 ft.
Two farm groups and a private consultant use hydraulic soil sampling machines to collect deep soil samples. The machines can be mounted on trucks, trailers, tractors, skid steers or ATVs.
Private Ag consultant Ron Tone, Tone Ag Consulting, St. Pierre, Manitoba, does soil sampling as part of his package for developing manure management plans, environmental audits and agronomic assessments on irrigation projects.
"We can go as deep as 40 ft.," Tone says.
In practice, sampling to 10 ft. has been adequate. Clients for this deep sampling include a few large hog operations and potato growers.
"We like to look at 1-ft. increments down to 10 ft. or to the depth of the water table," he says. "We charge about $100 Canadian per site to that depth and do a minimum of three sites on a field." Lab fees are additional.
Tone finds more problems with high nitrogen values in heavy clay than on light soils. It's a function of the cropping practice rather than soil type, he says.
In Tone's area, the manure-treated clay soils are usually in an annual crop, whereas the light soils are usually in grass or other forage. Even at double the recommended rate on grassland, there has been no problem with nitrogen leaching.
"Compared to grass, annual crops don't appear to take up as much nitrogen," he says.
Producer program
A producer-based, deep nutrient testing program began in Manitoba in 1992, says John McGregor, Manitoba Agriculture extension specialist at Steinbach.
"The Southeast Soil Conservation Organization (SESCO) was trying to determine base levels for nitrates in the soil. There were concerns about nitrates moving down in the different soil types and to what levels."
A 6-in. test with a hand probe had been an industry standard. Sometimes crops lodged after a soil-test recommendation had been followed.
SESCO introduced deeper sampling. Today, SESCO and a second group, South Interlake Land Management Association, use a Giddings Machine Company unit made in Ft. Collins, CO. A four-cylinder engine mounted on a trailer operates the 4-in. auger.
"Our testing showed nitrogen content in each 1-ft. level down to 6 ft. was fairly high — except for the top foot," he recalls. Today, 2-ft. sampling is the recommended minimum and some growers use 4-ft. samples.
Some older livestock operations had a long history of applications close to the barn. "Deep sampling showed them it was time to spread it elsewhere," McGregor says. "They were starting to lose the yield advantage."
SESCO recently re-sampled sites where 9-ft. samples had led to management changes in the late 1990s.
"We saw they were drawing down the surplus nitrogen levels on those fields. The producers were saving money, because they basically had applied no fertilizer for four or five years on some of those fields," he says.
Manitoba's hog industry went into a major expansion phase in the southeast around 1997. Manure application regulations became more stringent. Today, SESCO tests approximately 20 fields a year where manure has been applied.
"On the newer operations we're not seeing a buildup of nitrogen in the soil profile," says McGregor. "With changes to environmental regulations that require manure management plans, we're seeing an attitude change. We're treating manure more like fertilizer, putting it on at rates that match crop production."
Shelter study
A study of nutrient penetration under an outdoor hoop structure for hogs was presented in September 2004 by John Maltman, provincial swine specialist from Dugald, Manitoba, at the first annual Bedded Livestock Conference in Iowa. The deep sampling methods were used.
"We found that nitrogen and phosphorus were not moving down," says Maltman. "Chlorides are, but that's only an indication that moisture is moving down. It showed we can continue to construct shelters this way, regardless of the soil type."
Results from similar testing in Iowa and Australia were quite different. Both climates are warmer and rely heavily on sprinkler systems to cool hogs in the hoop structures. Iowa producers used corn stover for bedding, while Australian producers used cereal straw.
"The difference is bedding management," says Maltman. "Cereal straw is very absorbent. By the time animals are out of the hoop structure, in our climate, the straw probably is 3 to 4 ft. thick. Most of the ammonia is tied up in the straw. The phosphorus, as we expected, is tied up in the top 18 in. of soil."
As a result of deep soil testing efforts in eastern Manitoba, he says, protocols have been developed for fields when tests do show that nitrates are moving down.
"If nitrogen is a problem at 4 or 5 ft., we recommend that canola be grown on that field as often as the rotation will allow," says Maltman. "At less than 4 ft., we recommend cereals. At more than 5 ft., we recommend a permanent cover with alfalfa, because alfalfa roots will pull nitrogen up from as much as 12 ft. down."


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- 12v power socket
- 15in steel spare wheel
- 16in Alloy Wheels - Titane Matt Black
- 2 front and 2 rear speakers plus 2 tweeters
- 3 Point Rear Seat Belts x 3
- 3.5mm jack for external audio device and usb socket
- 3d connected navigation
- 7in multifunction colour touchscreen
- ABS with Electronic Brake Force Distributor EBD and Emergency Brake Assist EBA
- active city brake
- Airbags - Curtain Front and Rear
- airbags - front side
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- chrome door mirrors
- cruise control
- cornering assist fog lights
- dark tinted rear and side windows
- dab digital radio
- driver seat height adjustment
- deadlocks
- esp with hill assist
- driver and passenger airbag with passenger airbag deactivation switch
- electric rear windows
- electric front windows
- electrically operated and heated door mirrors with electric folding operation
- electrically assisted power steering
- gear shift indicator
- height and reach adjustable steering wheel
- external temperature gauge
- follow me home lighting
- led indicators
- leather trimmed steering wheel
- Interior Lights with Illuminated Footwell - LED
- led daytime running lights
- passenger seat height adjustment
- passenger and driver sunvisors with vanity mirrors
- One Touch Electric Front Drivers Window
- Park Assist with Colour Reversing Camera
- rear fog light
- Rear Head Restraints x3
- peugeot connect sos and assistance
- Rear Boomerang Effect Lights - LED
- remote control central locking
- rear wash wipe
- rear seat 3 point isofix location mounts x2
- rear parking sensors
- steering wheel mounted controls
- Speed Alarm-Speed Limiter
- Seats - 2-3 - 1-3 Rear Bench
- seatbelt alarm
- trip computer
- tinted rear and rear side windows
- thatcham approved cat 2 immobiliser
- Tech Edition - Badge
- visibility pack
- ultrasonic alarm
- tyre pressure sensors
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Hedda Gabler isn't exactly marriage material. She's the kind of woman who's easy to fall in love with as a theatrical character, but if she were a real person, you'd be wise to flee at the first sight of her. She's vindictive. She's moody. She's an obnoxious, aristocratic snob. She spends money like there's no tomorrow. Worst of all, she loves to play with guns.
It becomes painfully clear from the first scene that this woman is dangerous, both to herself and to everyone around her. Watch your back. She's a menace to both high and low society.
A new production of Henrik Ibsen's masterpiece Hedda Gabler recently opened at the Cell Theatre. Presented by Fusion Theatre Company and based in part on a staging by Joe Feldman, this is wicked fine theater performed by some of the best actors in town. Fusion has staged this production as theater-
It's the beautiful Hedda Gabler, as played by Jacqueline Reid, who dominates this board. She's so good at manipulating the pieces that the other characters aren't even aware they're playing her game.
The story is too intricate to be easily summarized. The play opens with Hedda returning from a six-month honeymoon with her new husband, George Tesman (Ross Kelly). George is a scholar whose specialty is the textile industry in 14th century Brabant—a boring subject if ever there was one that George makes utterly intolerable.
George is a doofus, but he's a good-hearted doofus, yet Hedda makes it clear from the beginning that she loathes him and everything he stands for. She spends much of the first part of the play expressing her immense boredom with him, making it clear to everyone that she deserves a far grander life. To inject some passion into her dull existence, she commits emotional adultery with Judge Brack (William Sterchi), a family friend, as well as George's brilliant but self-destructive academic rival, Lovborg (Vic Browder).
Ibsen's plot, as translated by Doug Hughes, is a streamlined, well-oiled machine that streaks toward its target like the latest classified piece of deadly military engineering. The dialogue is fast and funny, and the story is riddled with surprising twists and turns. Best of all, this talented cast and crew live up to the ingenious material.
Kelly is ideal as the obtuse academic. He has some of the plays funniest lines. Sterchi brings a sinister edge to most characters he plays. Equal parts charm and rottenness, he'd make an excellent Satan. As the vaguely slimy Judge Brack, he's pitch perfect.
Browder brings a cool, mysterious strangeness to Lovborg. Ninette S. Mordaunt is genuinely sweet as George's doting Aunt Julia. Laurie Thomas takes a nervous neurotic turn as Thea, a lower class woman who makes the mortal mistake of confiding in Hedda that she loves Lovborg. Even Catherine Gordon as Berta, the maid, melds seamlessly into this carefully composed universe of deceit.
Reid plays the key role, though, and in the end not much else matters. It's Hedda who pulls the strings, even the ones attached to her own wrists and ankles. Reid is so perfect for this character. To say her performance is nuanced doesn't do justice to how deeply she digs into Hedda's alluringly apocalyptic personality.
Hedda is a truly despicable person, but you can't help but empathize with her. She doesn't want anything to do with the restrictive morality and manners of her boring husband. She wants the world, and especially her own life, to be filled with passion and beauty, even if these things can only be brought about through inexcusable acts of violence and destruction.
You might not want to meet her. You certainly wouldn't want to marry her. But you have to respect her. There is no other option.


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EDIT: I got a bit further in POSSESS and I'm totally digging it. Cannot put it down, although I should. It's 3:23 AM. Anyway, thought I'd go ahead and add it to the giveaway...I'm a genius. I'll try to give it a full review next week. I know I still owe you a full review of LOLA and PETER NIMBLE, too. I swear, coming up! I'm totally behind.
by Michelle Hodkin
Summary: Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.
It can.
She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.
There is.
She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.
She's wrong.
Dude. This book was NOTHING like what I thought it was. I mean, yes, okay, it was. I'm such an over-exaggerator. But really, it was nothing like what I thought. The thing is, I can't even really go into it without spoiling the whole book for you. Hm. Okay, I can tell you that freaky, unexpected stuff happens in this. You're not sure what is or isn't real--just as Mara isn't sure. It's a total mind trip that plants you firmly in the shoes of Mara Dyer. But in the midst of tripping, you will drool for one Noah Shaw.
Yes. I said it. The boy. The totally hot boy. As in, SMOking. Brains, beauty, and a killer British accent. Also, he's just cool, you know? The boy's got swag. He's the bad boy fantasy of every sixteen year old and cougar, yet he's just so nice in a totally unexpected way. So dreamy. So...hot.
But boy aside, you also have Mara, a total crack-you-up--quick-witted with a flair for the snappy comeback. Mara and Noah together is pure magic. The story in this is fantastic--mysterious, full of twists and unexpected turns--but I could've read nothing but the dialogue and loved every minute of it. It's smart and funny and dripping with innuendo. The voice in this is just out-of-the-park killer. But it's more than just voice. Hodkin captured the essence of teenagedom: the layers of emotion and the drama, the youthful insecurity and self-focus (I need, I want, what did I do wrong, it's my fault, etc.)...and blossoming desire. Ohhhhh the desire. There's just this brilliant mesh of touches and teasing and boiling hot sexual tension.
And on top of it all, you get this story that is at once a contemp and a romance and yet also a paranormal (or is it?) and a psychological thriller (or is it?)--in essence a mystery with a sizzling romance. THE UNBECOMING OF MARY DYER is a fast-paced read that will have you slowing down just to savor and breathe it in. An unforgettable read.
Win an ARC of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER by Michelle Hodkin
POSSESS by Gretchen McNeil. I haven't finished reading this one yet, so I can't give it a full review yet. But I hope to soon! It's totally creeptastic and gripping so far.
(See its summary)
CLICK HERE to enter to win ARC of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER and POSSESS International Giveaway
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LiLa Roecker thinks Epic Fail is a great success - with giveaway
Matt Blackstone feels The Pull of Gravity
Scott Tracey is entranced by Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Carolina M Valdez marvels at The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer - with Giveaway
Carrie Harris is spellbound by Possess


text: Food poisoning occurs when food contaminated with organisms is ingested. The bacteria Staphylococcus aureus can commonly be found on people, but when allowed to grow in food this bacteria can produce a toxin that causes illness such as vomiting and diarrhea. Proper hygiene and handwashing can prevent this bacteria from entering food that will be eaten. The major source of Escherichia is from the feces of infected animals. It can also be found in untreated water. Cooking at the right temperature is important in eliminating this bacteria when it has contaminated food.


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Ubuntu Linux: Install RT2870 Chipset Based USB Wireless Adapterlast updated in Categories Ubuntu Linux
This blog post listed Linux Compatible USB wireless adapters. It seems that many new Linux users frequently have problems learning how to install RT2870 driver under Linux. I also received email requesting installation instructions for the same device. This quick tutorial will explains how to install RT2870 based chipset device with WPA2 authentication and TKIP wireless encryption.


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Roasted Corn and Garlic Rice for Two
I usually roast quite a few ears of corn when they are on sale and freeze what I don't use at that time. This is a wonderful side dish to go with a fish fry, barbecue or almost any summer meal. It's a constant at my house.—Marilyn Rodriguez, Fairbanks, Alaska
Total TimePrep: 40 min. Cook: 20 min.
Makes2 servings
- 2 ears sweet corn in husks
- 1 to 2 garlic cloves, peeled
- 1-1/4 teaspoons olive oil, divided
- 1/2 cup uncooked long grain rice
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- Dash pepper
- Carefully peel back husks from corn to within 1-in. of bottom; remove silk. Rewrap corn in husks. Place garlic cloves on a piece of heavy-duty foil; drizzle with 1/4 teaspoon oil. Fold foil around garlic and seal tightly.
- Place corn and garlic on a baking sheet. Bake at 400° for 30 minutes. Remove corn; bake garlic 5-10 minutes longer or until softened. Remove garlic from foil and place in a small bowl; cool. Mash with a fork. When corn is cool enough to handle, remove corn from cobs with a sharp knife.
- In a small saucepan, heat remaining oil over medium heat. Add rice; cook and stir for 2 minutes. Gradually add the broth, bay leaf, salt, pepper and roasted garlic. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 12-13 minutes or until heated through. Stir in roasted corn; cover and cook 7-10 minutes longer or until rice is tender. Discard bay leaf.
Nutrition Facts1 cup: 327 calories, 5g fat (1g saturated fat), 3mg cholesterol, 662mg sodium, 65g carbohydrate (5g sugars, 5g fiber), 9g protein.
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