Cello parents... let's chat!

My son is a sophomore who has played cello for over 10 years and double bass for 5 years. He is currently the principal bassist in his high school Symphony (he goes to a big suburban public school with 5 different orchestra levels), and he plays cello with a metro youth orchestra. He plays in a chamber music group too. He is currently working on Concerto in D Minor by Edouard Lalo. He is still early in the college search process, but I think he wants to continue taking lessons and playing in an orchestra in college, but probably not majoring in music. His selection is complicated by the fact that he also wants to do cross country and track in college too!

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If he wants to play music in college in an orchestra he will have a lot of choices as a non major. At the Ivies and some other elite schools that don’t offer music performance majors, they recruit talented musicians and are very proud of their student orchestras . My son went to Juilliard’s pre college program and about half the kids there were aiming to get into an elite school and that is why they were doing music (the admittance rates to incredibly selective universities in my son’s graduating class from there looked like a prep school). The ivies at least will also pay for student lessons as well.

Other universities that have performance majors may not allow non majors to be in the orchestra with majors, but they often have orchestras for non majors as well. NYU when I went there in the dark ages had kids majoring in music in the school of the arts, but they also had opportunities for non majors (I bowed out, because to say I stunk would be kind:)

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The “Day at Eastman” was great and I wish all the conservatories would do something similar. My son got a postcard in early October about it and so we registered; a week before the event (it was held on Veteran’s Day) they emailed for confirmation because apparently it was full and it sounded like there was a waitlist. There looked to be about 50 kids (plus parents) the day of. We had emailed faculty and set up a lesson for Sunday evening (after driving 6hours), stayed the night, and the Day at Eastman was 9-5. Way more than just a quick tour. It included mini-classes with long time professors, chamber music performance, lunch in their cafeteria plus tour, sitting in to watch their orchestras rehearse and lots of Q&A opportunity. It might be worth finding out if they do a spring one as well for you guys to attend since they mentioned they only do the one in the fall and all other fall visits are just the regular 1 hour tour. We were very impressed with the school and facilities (our home turf is NEC and BU and the performance facilities at Eastman felt nicer - however the dorm which is old was not fantastic but we are used to hanging out at NEC’s dorm which is only about 10 years old). My son has friends from past summer music programs that already go there so they met up as well. As we drove away my son said, “I would be very happy here.”

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My cello son was in Heifetz Jr last year. Your comments on a different summer music thread were incredibly helpful to us. Just wanted to say thanks.

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So glad to hear that! Is he planning on going back, or are you looking at other programs?

He’d love to return if they’ll have him. He’s also applying to Meadowmount and Bowdoin, though. How about your cellist?

Thank you for this thread! I have not had my kid travel with a cello on a plane. We have rented at destinations before and that seems to work well. Otherwise, I’m happy to drive. My son has not looked at college yet, but recently has expressed interest in being a cellist. He is hoping to do any summer program that will help him grow as a cellist. Was interested in Meadowmount but then had second thoughts. Applied to Tanglewood BUTI last year, was accepted, but decided on Greenwood instead. Had a great time. Went to Heifetz in the past. Enjoyed that too. I think he would have a great time at a lot of different summer programs.

We had four cello flights over the weekend and it all went very well. Very different experience flying with a cello in the US compared to Canada. In the US you handle it all yourself.

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Which airline(s) did you use? Did they give you any hassle?

This trip was all Delta flights.
Everything went fine. We did have people (flight attendants, maybe a gate agent?) tell us it was too big and not allowed, but we would just tell them it had its own seat and we just needed a seatbelt extender and they were then helpful and no troubles.
I could check in my son and myself online,
but couldn’t do the same for the cello’s seat, so we’d tell the gate agent about it when they were available.
I think that if we hadn’t had a window seat for it or if the flights had been overbooked I’d be nervous because they didn’t seem familiar with what we were doing, but we had no problems at all.

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When you booked did you do it online or call? This process frightens me but I know we have to do it next year. (My cello son is a hs junior now.) I appreciate all the tips on what worked for you guys!

In my reading it seemed that almost every airline you need to call to book the cello. So I called for our seats and the cello and get it all in one booking. The cello gets a seat with your last name but a first name like xtrst (extra seat) or cbbg (cabin baggage).

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My S is a professional cellist who flies periodically with his cello. He always calls the airline directly.

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This weekend we flew with Alaska Airlines and it all went well. With Delta I couldn’t check in the cello seat online beforehand. With Alaska I was able to check it in with our seats so that was nice. On the way out there were 3 cellos on the plane.
We had the same flight crew on our return trip asking about how the auditions went. :grinning:

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We had that happen to/from Philly when kid was auditioning. Same crew and they remembered the snare drum and cello bows that kid was carrying outbound.

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Happy to have found this thread! My son is a junior and is a cellist. He’s trying to decide if he really wants to pursue performance – he’s leaning toward no, though it’s hard because he absolutely loves to play. It’s what he reaches for when he’s bored, when he’s unhappy, when he’s happy. But he knows what it takes to be a top-tier cellist and he is self-aware enough to know he is simply not that good. This may be because he is also very involved in academics and does not have the time to devote to his instrument. He also composes and is very interested in conducting. It’s a tough business (his dad is an administrator so our son has been exposed to the behind-the-scenes world of orchestras all his life.) But he is interested in pursuing a dual-degree somewhere like Northwestern or Yale. It’s so much pressure on these kids!
Regarding travel: He has flown with his cello to Interlochen and will again this summer to BUTI. His cello is old and finicky so we have always bought it its own seat. We always try to fly direct because we don’t want to run the risk of running into an airline employee refusing to let the cello board into the cabin. Once they made him seat the cello all the way in the back row, despite us buying a specific seat next to him and calling the airline to confirm.

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Flying with Air Canada and a cello is an experience! You are the first on the plane, a small crew comes and installs a net over it, and then the flight is like usual.
The need for a crew to install the net gives the real potential for issues, but it all went smoothly for us.

My son’s group just flew into Toronto with Air Canada, and yep, had to have the case netted up. One thing most people with cellos say is if you have to fly air canada, get priority boarding so it is put away early, that with regular boarding there have been lot more incidents where they wanted to put the cello in a closet or check it because 'it is too crowded to properly affix the cello to the seat".

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Air Canada is the one I have heard horror stories about! Sheku Kanneh-Mason had to cancel a performance in Toronto due to Air Canada’s shenanigans!

Definitely need to be there early- I can imagine getting the airport employees in to install the net after boarding had already started would be extremely difficult.