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1998 has been a busy year for Locrian cellist Greg Hesselink. On October 16,
he performed the Elgar concerto with the New Amsterdam Symphony; in April, he
played the Britten Solo Sonata with the Kloppenberg dance troupe; as a member
of the New Millenium Ensemble, he played six concerts in the New York area
and appeared on their debut CD, Here Comes Everybody; and he performed
regularly with the SEM Ensemble, New Band, the Vivaldi Consort and Broadway's
Jekyll and Hyde. Only five years out of conservatory, Greg is a
successful freelancer and one of the most sought-after cellists in New York.
But freelancing is a rough way to earn a living, and, given the vicissitudes
of the music business, one might expect a cellist of his caliber to seek the
stability of a tenure-track teaching job or membership in a major symphony
orchestra. Greg isn't interested. Which makes sense, if you know Greg.
Let's put it bluntly: Greg Hesselink is a bit unconventional. He has a
highly original mind; his opinions, always expressed aggressively, are rarely
borrowed. His playing itself is not the easy result of some pat methodology
learned in conservatory, but rather reflects a long personal struggle. Even
his slightly unkempt appearance (he is sometimes likened to Frank Zappa)
suggests a person who doesn't like to blend in too much.
Behind Greg's wildness is a straightforward Midwestern upbringing. He grew
up in Holland, Michigan, where his dad was a theologian in the Dutch Reformed
Church. He studied cello and percussion for a while before deciding to
concentrate on the former.
For high school, Greg went away to the Interlochen Arts Academy in northern
Michigan, not so much to pursue a career in cello as to escape the boredom of
his hometown. I think my parents recognized that if I had stayed in
Holland, I would have exploded, he remembers.
For most of his time at IAA, Greg goofed around and put little effort into
his instrument. His teacher, Crispen Campbell, was understanding. He co
uld see that I was not a big school lover, and he gave me space and
understanding in a way that if I'd had a really dogmatic teacher I would have
hated it. Then, after three years of sitting in the back of the cello
section, Greg suddenly decided to pursue music as a career and began a tough
regimen of practice.
His decision to take up the cello in earnest was caused partly by a fruitful
summer of study with Steve Doane at the Chattaqua Festival. An inspiring
teacher, Doane stretched the conventional student-teacher relationship in
ways that Greg found beneficial. He would demonstrate on his own cello while
encouraging Greg to walk around him analyzing what he was doing. I always
left the lesson feeling and playing better than I had beforehand. After
graduation from IAA, Greg went to study with Doane at the Eastman School of
Music.
At Eastman, Greg worked fanatically on his technique, spending at least an
hour a day just playing open strings. His work involved more than rote
adoption of someone else's instructions. With Doane's encouragement, Greg
sought a deeper intellectual understanding of what is involved in good cello
playing. It's sort of in my nature to be analytical, to want to understand
the workings of things.
The quest to reinvent technique for himself posed a problem that shaped much
of his study at Eastman and at SUNY Stonybrook, where he later earned a
Masters degree. For while he extols the role of understanding in music
making'it increases [one's] sense of beauty, he says'he was finding it
inhibiting as well. He was trying, by analyzing his own playing, to control
it, and what his playing gained in security, it lost in grace. Once, in a
performance class, after he played a Haydn concerto for his peers, a fellow
student commented, You played like you were really concerned about playing
well. For all of his sparkling technique, his playing lacked artlessness.
Although he did not realize it at the time, he now sees the perfect
performance as one in which the artifice of technique is invisible, in which
the music, or the product as he calls it, is fully revealed. He
disparages performers whose fast and furious techniques are in the foreground
of their performances. The point, he says, is not how fast you can play, but
how much you are able to express what you have in your mind.
While he was studying at Stonybrook with Timothy Eddy, Greg met violinist
Ellen Jewett. He calls her an instinctual player and credits her with his
success in transcending his preoccupation with his own playing and adopting
an egoless stance.
It is a testament to Greg's success at freeing himself from his own technique
that he is so flexible. Within the broad stylistic range of Locrian
repertoire, he is equally at home with the demands of Ned Rorem's lyrical
lines as with John Cage's static sounds. Nevertheless, he seems to view the
struggle to play beyond oneself to be ongoing'not so much a problem to be
solved as an inclination to be constantly checked.
The coming year will be no less busy than the last for Greg. In March he
will play solo sonatas by Bach, Schubert and Henze with the Kloppenberg Dance
Company in Boston and New York; in May he will play a concert of pop/folk
music at Merkin Hall with cellist Giovanni Sollima; and The New Millennium
Ensemble will present their usual passel of concerts.
Given all this activity, and such a wide variety of music, it seems logical
to ask him about his own stylistic preferences. He claims not to have a
favorite composer or style and maintains that the same principles of playing
can be applied to the most avant-garde pieces as to the works of the
Classical masters. Such democratic taste seems hard to accept coming from
someone with opinions as forceful as Greg's. But when pressed recently to
name a style of music that, though obviously well conceived, does not appeal
to him, his answer was uncharacteristically terse: Country.
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