New Year’s Resolution: A Cello Recital

As 2012 drew to a close, we asked you to declare your creative New Year’s resolution. We heard from more than 100 ambitious creatives, including aspiring novelists, composers, and a poet-turned-singer.
Now that it’s 2013, it’s time to make good on those promises. Over the course of the year, Kurt Andersen will check in on a few of your projects to see how they are going. His first call is to Michael Relland, an elementary school band and orchestra teacher in Phoenix, who wrote to Studio 360:

“I would like to finally put on a cello recital. “I guess I always saw it as excessively self-serving but, having given ten years to the public schools, I’m ready for an artistic ‘me’-explosion! I see it not only as a way to live out my adolescent wish, but to rally and find collaborators.”

But “asking others to come hear it,” Michael admits, is daunting. “It’s easy to play in a room and be modest and think happy things about the noises I make. But to involve everyone else, to explicitly say you’re an artist is more of a challenge.”
For the program, Michael has his eye on Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites. “That’s the top of the mountain for most cellists,” he tells Kurt. “He wrote them as instructional pieces so we have this echo of myself teaching kids to play.”
â?? See more creative New Year’s resolutions