Shifting for Cello Players, What’s in It?
Event Details
A pedagogy workshop led by:
Megan Taylor
ARCM
, CATTS, AUSTAT, BMUS (Perf) ANU
Date & Time:
Saturday 22nd October 2022, 4pm – 5pm (AEST)
Venue:
Online
Cost:
AUSTA Member: $10
Non Member: $15
Trybooking:
https://www.trybooking.com/CCOPV
Contact:
Mapping out a fingerboard is lifelong fun for cellists, including the travel between positions.
This workshop will be a forum where we discuss how to approach shifting from the earliest years of learning, right up what we do as professionals. We will look at how a good knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of shifting give us certainty and style, and how we provide a left hand base for the bow to operate on in an unencumbered way. What artistic and historical considerations do we consider to help us make choices about the mechanism and style we decide to use? What are all the mechanisms we use at different musical points? How do we organise the bow in relation to shifts?
What have anticipation, ground force, momentum and gravity to do with it? How do our bodies work? How does an understanding of anatomy help the specifics of shifting?
Megan Taylor
Megan Taylor was educated at the NSW Conservatorium of Music High School. beginning cello studies with John Painter.
After spending 1O years in London studying with Raphael Wallfisch and Stefan Popov, and working in a freelance capacity with many ensembles, Megan moved to Copenhagen to study with the European Suzuki Group, beginning a lifelong passion for learning about teaching. After returning to Sydney Megan worked with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and many touring groups such as the Royal Ballet and The Bolshoi Ballet orchestras. She undertook her Teacher Training for Alexander Technique in Sydney and began teaching Alexander Technique in Sydney including training other teachers at the Centre for Alexander Technique Studies. She taught cello at many schools in Sydney and ran many large workshops for cellists and study workshops for teachers with her colleague Pip Jackson (Philippa Harding).
Megan then moved to Canberra to undertake a B Mus (Perf) with Lois Simpson, graduating in 1994. She has been teaching both cello and Alexander in Canberra since then.
Megan has been a cello tutor at Youth Orchestras in Europe, Sydney and Canberra. She considers cello classes or tutorials essential for learning and developing the young cellist, given the highly specialised nature of the fingering system, patterns idiosyncratic for different composers, and the traditions and learning passed down through generations. That is the best fun!
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