I started playing the cello when I was ten years old because a few years before that I saw Yo Yo Ma play on Sesame Street. When I started playing the cello, my mom would bring home CD after CD of cellists especially Yo Yo Ma and one day she brought home something particularly interesting. It was done by Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. I popped in the CD and heard a whole different sound than I was used to. I grew up on Country and Classic Rock and Classical music amongst other things, but I had never heard anything quite like this. I sat there and tried to name the instruments that were being played, but I could not figure them out. This was a CD that Yo Yo Ma wanted to put together to initiate unity and getting to know your neighbors and he wanted it to also be a reminder of the Silk Road in Asia. If you want to know more about it, the website is http://www.silkroadproject.org/. This was probably my first exposure to music from a different continent.

A genre of music that most of you would probably not guess that I listen to is rock, and I don't mean John Mayer, I mean bands like Three Days Grace, System of a Down, and Crossfade. My sister was the one who introduced me to this type of music, and as I got older I wanted to play more than just classical music on my cello. A perfect opportunity came along when I met a cellist who was in college at the time and he wanted to get a group of four cellists together so that we could play stuff written by Metallica that Apocalyptica also played. So about twice a week, we would get together and play Metallica which was much different than the Kol Nidre that I was working on in my private lessons at the time. The sight of us was pretty funny actually because you would expect three big guys in college to be in this group, but not with a 5'2" fifteen year old girl from the booneys. The cellist who asked me to play with them was actually the person who got me started on my first cello concerto ironically enough. Here is a link to one of the songs Apocalyptica did that we worked on:

I got a little older and my junior and senior year I played in a coffee shop. I was just playing some of the pieces that I had learned over the years as background music and a couple of guys who play guitar and sing also happened to work there. One day when I came in, one of the guys had brought his guitar and asked if I knew any classic rock and if I wanted to play some with him and of course I said yes. So I ended up improvising to some Classic Rock and we actually got a few gigs together too. Overall, I have been introduced to a lot of genres that we hear in America, but not particularly to those that exist in other countries. I am really eager to hear more music that is played all over the world!